


west winging it

by haedeluna



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - America, Alternate Universe - Politics, Assistant to the First Son Huang Renjun, Banter, Enemies to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Son Na Jaemin, M/M, Mutual Pining, Rating May Change, Romantic Comedy, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, West Wing Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:42:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haedeluna/pseuds/haedeluna
Summary: Jaemin Na is America’s First Son and golden boy: gorgeous, charismatic, international socialite — and the bane of Renjun’s existence. As Jaemin’s mother gears up for her reelection bid, the pressure is mounting. And beneath his presidential veneer, Jaemin is so much more than he lets on.Renjun finds himself caught between his own career ambitions and the First Son, who his attraction towards is increasingly harder to ignore — but could upend a nation and sacrifice everything Renjun has built.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 137
Kudos: 340





	1. is it still a california king if we're in france?

**Author's Note:**

> hi! 
> 
> this fic has been my baby since june, so i'm very excited to start sharing her! i'd like to blame _red, white, and royal blue_ by casey mcquiston, _all american girl_ by meg cabot, the many obama white house staffer memoirs i've read over the years, and my own relentless pursuit of self-indulgence. the title is borrowed from pat cunnane's delightful memoir of the same name. (how american of me, to steal from others without asking.)
> 
> thanks to my beta, cj, without whom this story would still be rotting in my google docs, never to be touched again. you're the germany to my france. <3
> 
> enjoy a gratuitous [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Ppngnv3WHyz5n71SWMYk6?si=XW0V4EbLTCSI1wT5Nt1onw)!

But in politics, as in other things, the heart wants what it wants. — David Litt

Life on overload / Must we make a spectacle of love? — John Legend

Here are a few things they don’t tell you about working for the White House. 

First: No, the White House does not have an indoor swimming pool. There hasn’t been one since 1970, when Richard Nixon built the Press Briefing Room on top of it, to oblige the growing demand for TV news.

And yes, this disappoints most of Renjun’s Tinder matches when they ask. 

He wouldn’t be allowed anywhere close, even if there _was_ one. The Assistant to the First Son would probably be tackled by three Secret Service agents if he so much as dipped a toe in without prior authorization. But Renjun isn’t much of a swimmer, anyway. 

Second: Air Force One has its perks. Even for staffers, who are free to partake in the bottomless supply of alcohol and superb in-flight VOD selection. There are worse things in life than sailing over the Atlantic, sipping prosecco and watching _West Wing_ only semi-ironically. 

It might be 11 a.m., but Renjun is a firm believer that alcohol that sparkles is an anytime-of-day type of drink. And with Renjun’s job, he deserves a drink or two.

Third: what no one tells you about Air Force One is that by some oversight of industrial design, it only has one, tiny bathroom. 

Most of the time, the White House staff flies out for events at ungodly hours of the morning. So everyone turns up at the private airway dressed for comfort, the men in Adidas and the women in Lululemon, bleary-eyed and messy-haired at 4 a.m. 

Except for Chenle, history’s youngest Chief of Staff, and arguably the best-dressed. He once admitted to Renjun that he sleeps in his suits the night before to be effortlessly chic for the morning. 

“How do you not end up with your shirts all wrinkled?” Renjun asked him. 

“Two things you should never underestimate, Renjun,” Chenle said, “are the power of Brooks Brothers, and me.”

The athleisure is fine, until it’s time to change into business-formal for whatever gala or fundraiser or other stuffy event they’re attending. So everyone starts lining up to change clothes hours before the flight lands. 

And if you can’t get into the bathroom in time, you’re forced to change, woe to you, out in the open in front of the most powerful members of the United States government. Renjun speaks from personal experience. To this day he can’t look the Secretary of Homeland Security in the eye after seeing him in his tighty-whiteys. 

And last but not least: Jaemin Na, son of the first Korean-American president of the United States, is an insufferable fucking asshole. 

The insufferable fucking asshole in question steps out of the Air Force One bathroom, as Renjun’s fist is still raised mid-knock. Under Jaemin’s suit jacket, slate gray and metallic — so painfully stylish Renjun knows he’ll see a thousand iterations on runways soon — his collared shirt is open by a few buttons. It exposes a swath of Jaemin’s collarbones and down his broad chest. His dark hair is a little tousled from changing clothes.

Renjun pointedly focuses on Jaemin’s eyes and nowhere else. “Button your shirt up. You look like Heathcliff fell sideways through a Zara dressing room.”

Jaemin glances down at himself, wide-eyed and innocent, as if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing. “Is that not a good look to have?”

“Maybe if you’re as effortlessly hipster as Harry Styles or something. Which you aren’t.”

The corner of Jaemin’s mouth spasms in the hint of a smile before it’s gone, so fast Renjun might have imagined it. “I disagree. It fits my dashing image, don’t you think?” 

“You are the chronic, unmitigatable nuisance of my life,” Renjun says. “Like indigestion.”

Jaemin crosses his arms and squares his shoulders. He’s looking down his nose at him, emphasizing every infuriating inch of height he has on Renjun. “You should mind how you speak to your superiors. Especially ones as good-looking and well-dressed as I am.” 

Renjun scoffs. “Hold my stuff, will you? I have to vomit.” 

He shoves his phone into Jaemin’s chest pocket and pushes past him into the bathroom, taking pains not to brush against him any more than he has to. It’s a losing battle in such a cramped space. Jaemin opens his mouth to retort, already smirking at whatever barb he’s about to throw Renjun’s way. Renjun slams the door in his face.

Tiny victories. Renjun takes them where he can get them. 

He emerges some time later in his crisp black suit and silvery tie (selected by the stylist team to match Jaemin, he’s sure), the sweatsuit he was formerly wearing in hand. 

The First Son is lounging by the window in the back row, having stolen Renjun’s seat from across the aisle. He’s flipping idly through an issue of a glossy tabloid _._ He still looks distinctly windswept, his collar disheveled, but at least he’s not sporting the Fabio look any longer. But his tie is knotted wrong, as always. Because why would he bother to exert the effort when he has Renjun to do it for him?

Jaemin thinks he’s better than Renjun, he knows it. Like Renjun is his butler and not a salaried employee of the White House.

Even if he has “assistant” in his job title.

Renjun considers the odds of strangling Jaemin with his own tie without the other staffers noticing, but rules against it. For now. 

“What are they writing about you this month?”

Jaemin turns and the sunlight, almost blinding at this altitude, paints his profile in bright white, lights his brown eyes in honey and amber. He missed a small patch while shaving, right along the plane of his jaw. Renjun could trace it with one finger if he wanted to. The thought almost makes him shiver.

For a second he forgets how to use his lungs. Maybe the whole Heathcliff thing works better than he admits.

“Looks like I’m planning my vacation with my soon-to-be-fiancé, the princess of Denmark,” Jaemin says. “I forgot Denmark had a monarchy. Could you pencil in Majorca with the missus?”

“I’ll mark it on your Google calendar.” Renjun taps his chin in contemplation. “That’s better than last month. They said you were having an affair with Kate Middleton to destabilize European-American relations.”

Jaemin returns his sneer in kind. “A geopolitical sex scandal? As if I have the time.”

Renjun gestures at his mess of an outfit. “You’re all… Rumpled. Come here.” 

Jaemin sighs as he stands. He pulls Renjun closer by the elbow so they leave the aisle free for staffers. Other White House personnel hustle to and fro from the President’s Suite, plastic coffee cups in hand and IDs on lanyards swinging on their necks, all while chattering into Bluetooth earphones like Renjun’s own. 

The staff cabin is buzzing as they approach their destination, the noise growing as staffers stir from mid-flight naps and begin the flurry of phone calls to be made before touchdown. Air Force One is en-route to Normandy for the eightieth anniversary of D-Day. Jaemin will give remarks before introducing his mom in front of hundreds, including heads of state and government that still make Renjun quake in his pleather wing-tips.

It won’t be the biggest audience Jaemin has ever spoken to. That would have been his mother’s inauguration night, in front of almost three million Americans with over forty million tuning in. But it will be one of the most star-studded. 

Renjun is not panicking over it. Not at all.

He jerks the tie too roughly, just to hear Jaemin’s small noise of indignation, and sets about tying it. “Seriously, has no one ever taught you how to tie a tie properly? Didn’t your dad—”

He freezes.

“No, actually.” Jaemin’s voice is mild. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean — I’m sorry.” Jesus Christ. He’s an insensitive dick. 

“It’s fine. No offense taken.” 

“Still, I should know better.” 

“You’re okay. My mom taught me when I was eleven.” Jaemin touches Renjun’s wrist gently, two fingers, to assure him it really is fine. “But why should I bother when I have your talented hands to do it for me?” 

Jaemin’s breath is warm against his cheek this close.

“Yeah, well. Your mom doesn’t pay me to play dress-up with fully-grown men.” Renjun grumbles in the back of his throat and presses a finger into Jaemin’s chest, where the buttons are crooked. “You missed one here. I have to start all over again.” 

He gives up on the tie for now and sets to work unbuttoning Jaemin’s shirt without ceremony, ignoring the tingle when his fingertips brush against bare skin as he works his way down. 

It’s not a big deal. Renjun isn’t thinking about anything at all. He doesn’t think about how Jaemin’s fingers are lingering on his wrist. 

A huff of a laugh that Renjun feels on his neck more than he hears. “Your hands are shaking.” 

“They are not. You keep moving.” 

Then Renjun makes the gargantuan mistake of looking up at Jaemin. 

Who’s gazing down at him through low, hooded eyes and thick lashes with the ghost of a smile playing across his mouth. Positively wicked. 

“If you wanted to take my clothes off,” Jaemin says, low enough that only Renjun can hear, “you could have just asked.” 

Renjun’s entire body from the crown of his head to his feet flushes hot with something like rage.

He shoves Jaemin away, who laughs. “What, did I strike a nerve?”

“You’re a walking workplace harassment lawsuit,” Renjun bites. His voice doesn’t shake because he doesn’t allow it to. “Button it yourself.” 

Jaemin does just that, taking his sweet time to leisurely secure each button, without taking his eyes off of Renjun.

“Technically, not true. Since I’m not paid to be here. The president’s kids aren’t allowed to hold official positions.” As if Renjun doesn’t know how the presidential administration operates. “Anti-nepotism law, and all that.” 

“Right. Because every president has followed that rule,” Renjun snips. “You don’t need to mansplain it to me.” He steps into his space again to smooth out Jaemin’s collar over his broad shoulders. “And I hate that _that’s_ the part you argue with me about. Not the lawsuit part.” 

“If it were a crime to flirt with staffers, I’d be in prison a thousand times over.” 

“Don’t wait around on my behalf.”

“Will you write to me in my jail cell?”

“No.” Renjun smiles, all saccharine-sweetness. “But I’ll bribe the judge who put you there to throw away the key.”

Jaemin’s eyes are full of mirth but he bites his lip to hold in a laugh. “Fix my tie, now, would you? Since that’s what my mom pays you for.”

Renjun takes both ends of his tie, sliding one end down to get the perfect length. He’s developed a surfeit of skills in his time as Jaemin’s assistant, one of which is tying the perfect Windsor. 

This close, he can smell the coffee Jaemin had been drinking, and his cologne, vanilla and birch and something deeper like spice. It’s not a combination that Renjun would consider his favorite. (That would be the smell of his mother’s _xiao long bao_ steaming in the kitchen on the sunny afternoons of his youth.) But it’s a fusion of smells so inherently Jaemin, one that sparks an almost Pavlovian response in Renjun, that at this point it’s as identifiable as the smell of his childhood home. 

And when one of Jaemin’s hands drifts to Renjun’s hip, right at the edge of his waistband and warm through the linen of his shirt, his stomach doesn’t do a wiggle-flip-and-barrel-roll. 

Because that would mean acknowledging the tremble of his hands, too. 

“Have you practiced your speech?” 

Jaemin snorts a little, barely an exhale. “Do you really have to ask?”

“I do.” He doesn’t, actually. Some people are born to heal the sick or run numbers or boss around people twice their age, like Chenle. Jaemin was put on the Earth to sway even the staunchest red voters with resounding, powerhouse speeches. He was also sent from whatever personal hell dimension that was designed to annoy Renjun, specifically. But that’s neither here nor there.

The rock-star charisma translates almost too well to public speaking. It must be something in his family’s genetic pool. Being beautiful to look at doesn’t hurt, either. Also genetic.

Renjun loops the tie into a tidy knot. “Donghyuck pulled an all-nighter to write it in time. And it’s his birthday today. Do him the justice of delivering it well.”

“I’ll work hard,” Jaemin sing-songs.

Before Renjun can respond, the pilot’s voice crackles over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are preparing for landing in fifteen minutes. As we begin our descent, please fasten all seatbelts...”

“Junie, I need you in the Presidential Suite,” Chenle says through Renjun’s Bluetooth earpiece at almost the same moment. “Bring your hellion, too.” 

“Is that Chenle?” Jaemin asks, having butted in close enough to Renjun’s ear to eavesdrop. “Tell him I’m not coming unless he calls me by my codename.” 

“No.”

“Then I’m not coming.”

Renjun rolls his eyes and wishes for the sweet release of death. “Chenle. Please call him... the name. He’s being difficult,” he says in Mandarin. It’s a tactic they use when they don’t want Jaemin to understand what they’re saying. 

“When is he not?” Chenle responds in kind, then switches back to English. “Renjun, please bring _Snowball_ to the president’s cabin. Before I crash this plane and take you all to hell with me.” 

“There in two.” Renjun switches off his earphone. “Come on. We’ve been summoned.” 

He turns on his heel and stalks his way up the aisle, feeling Jaemin’s eyes bore into his back as he follows. He hears him mumble, “Why does he get to call you Junie and not me?”

Renjun and Jaemin pass through the dining cabin, where a couple of junior-level staffers are stuffing their pockets with the complimentary breadsticks, while flight attendants try to shoo them back to their seats before descent begins. 

The President’s Suite near the plane’s nose is even more packed than the staffer’s cabin they left behind. President Joohyun Bae, radiant in a vibrant red pantsuit and matching heels, spares a glance and an absent smile for her son. Then she turns back to an intense discussion with a few cabinet members. 

She’s sipping from a champagne flute at the same time, though, and Renjun appreciates her style. 

President Bae was not the first woman to run for office. But she was the last thing America expected to rise, meteoric, through the Democratic primaries as the feisty, firebrand, Bronx-born Speaker of the House, and solidify her spot as the first Asian-American president in U.S. history. She’s also whip-smart, terrifyingly capable, and does it all wearing killer YSL stilettos. 

She’s everything Renjun has ever wanted to be and more.

When he confessed this to Jaemin, he laughed in his face and told him he’d get her to autograph a napkin for him. He didn’t. But if he had, Renjun would have laminated that napkin and treasured it to the end of his days.

Chenle’s artfully-mussed head pops over the back of a nearby seat. “You might wanna strap in for landing, boys, before the flight attendants have a coronary.” 

“‘Boys,’ he calls us. Did you hear that? ‘Boys,’” Jaemin says as they slide into the seats behind Chenle and buckle their seatbelts. “Younger than us by an entire year, and yet no respect—” 

“And a perfectly functioning set of ears, I might add.” 

Jaemin continues at a whisper, “No formality, no civility—” 

And before Renjun knows it, Air Force One is touching down to the polite applause of the cabin, and the bubble of calm bursts. Staffers launch out of their seats in a frenzy of preparation to disembark. President Bae is swept out of sight by the throng of stylists applying last minute touches to be camera-ready. The press pool swarms to snap behind-the-scenes photos of the president, shots that will end up on CNN reels and Vogue columns alike. Renjun may or may not have one of himself with POTUS that he keeps framed on his desk.

Renjun turns to Jaemin to give him a final once-over, fidgeting with his suit jacket’s lapels. “Good luck out there.” 

“That’s helpful. Almost as helpful as ‘thoughts and prayers’ from a politician.”

“I’m serious.”

Jaemin smiles, all gleaming white teeth and arrogance. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” 

Renjun yanks Jaemin’s collar until they’re almost nose-to-nose, a shade too aggressive for where they are, out in the open like this with dozens of staffers and the security team milling around. And Renjun can’t find it in himself to care. 

“Do _not_ embarrass me today in front of six different global superpowers, or so help me, I’ll —”

“You’ll do what?” Jaemin baits him. His eyes are so much darker than moments before.

Renjun wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, his mouth suddenly dry, and Jaemin’s eyes follow the motion. Renjun is still fisting the front of his shirt. 

“Let’s just say, I hope being the son of a global superpower comes with life insurance.”

And Jaemin without breaking eye contact pulls something out of his breast pocket, nudges open Renjun’s jacket, and slides it into his. 

It’s Renjun’s work phone, and his staffer ID for security clearance denoting his name and title. Jaemin doesn’t have one — has never needed one. People know his name as soon as he steps in the room. Renjun had forgotten he’d handed them over to him. 

Jaemin pats a spot on his chest next to the pocket he just filled, directly over Renjun’s heart. “I do so love when you threaten my life.” 

He doesn’t move his hand. 

And Renjun — Renjun is a coward, his traitor heart beating a violent tattoo against his too-tight ribs. He steps away so fast he almost trips, before Jaemin can feel it pounding against his palm. 

“Don’t get used to it. It’s above my pay grade to give you orders.” Renjun cocks his head, assessing. “But that’s _your_ job, isn’t it?” 

Something passes across Jaemin’s face, too fast for Renjun to decipher — surprise? Guilt? Before Renjun can parse its meaning, Chenle is pushing them both down the stairs to the door, to the front of the throng, Secret Service agents in mirrored shades reflecting Renjun’s pale face as they press in close. 

Chenle’s voice is in both Renjun’s earpiece and right beside him, counting down, “And we’re live in five, four, three, two—” 

A blast of hot air and the cries of the crowd greet them as the plane’s door hisses open. 

The president strides through first, beaming wide with a hand thrown out in a wave before she even steps out of the plane. The crowd roars, barely contained behind barriers on the tarmac below. 

Then Jaemin follows next, Renjun close at his heels. He never thinks it’s possible, and yet it always surprises him when the crowd somehow screams even louder. 

As they descend the stairs, Renjun schools his expression into the cool neutrality expected of staff members. And he watches the mask of the president’s son slide over Jaemin’s face. It’s not that dramatically different from the Jaemin that Renjun sees every day behind the White House gates. Just sharper, more refined — a little too daring and sensual for boy-next-door but something very close to it. 

Renjun always feels out-of-place like this: in front of so many cameras and eager, shining faces, hands outstretched. Microphones are shoved towards them in hopes of snatching the sound byte that’ll make headlines in the next vicious news cycle. The reporters’ white teeth gleam with bloodlust and superficiality. 

It makes Renjun feel small and caged and he can never figure out where to put his hands.

But Jaemin basks in it, becomes something equal parts coy and forthcoming. Giving the cameras carefully-crafted PR answers that offer just enough to draw the audience into craving more. Craving him. He’s _good_ at this, almost too good to be believed, if Renjun hadn’t seen it with his own eyes since his first days at the White House. 

As a rule, Jaemin walks the line of family-friendly enough to be America’s sweetheart, and tantalizing enough to be America’s sex symbol. This is not an easy task, and Renjun hates to admit that he admires it. 

Line Jaemin up among any number of men in their twenties and ask someone to pick out the celebrity, even someone who’s never heard of the president’s son. They would choose Jaemin every single time. There’s only so much media training and charisma can do. But a blessed few are born with the power to operate under the pressure and expectations of a nation, and pull it off with finesse.

And Jaemin is one of those few. 

Renjun doesn’t fit into this world. Jaemin’s world. He wasn’t born for it, built for it, the way Jaemin was.

Renjun might be on the opposite side of the press barrier. But he’s just like the fans behind it, arms outstretched, desperate for even a brush with the living icon at his side, just another nameless face in the crowd.

The thing is. 

The thing. Is.

What they don’t tell you about working for the White House. What they don’t meticulously outline in the grueling FBI background checks and stacks of NDAs during orientation. What your coworkers don’t warn you about in snatches of conversations stolen between meetings and press conferences and campaign stops and focus groups — so many focus groups. 

What they don’t tell you is that Jaemin Na will be the bane of your existence.

Hating your boss in D.C. is a given. That’s one thing. Hating your boss, who is the same age as you and still makes you tie his ties and has stupid perfectly-tousled hair and a deeply punchable mouth, is a whole, other enormous, unwieldy Thing. It makes Renjun sweaty under his suit collar. 

Especially when the president is also your employer. And her son is your boss.

To be fair, the president is everyone’s employer. Technically. Whatever. 

Because Renjun is good at his job. Excellent at it, if he drops the false modesty. He’s been told by people who like him that he’s goal-oriented and ambitious, and by people who hate him that he’s an abrasive dickhead. 

Renjun believes that the truth always lies somewhere in the middle.

He’s hyper-organized and can multitask like a motherfucker, and doesn’t back down when strung-out, megalomaniac politicians give him shit. Which happens often. And all of these qualities make him the ideal Assistant to the First Son. 

But Jaemin, on the other hand, is a demon who lives on iced Americanos and the sustenance of Renjun’s waking stress nightmares. Like some kind of panic-feeding succubi. He can drink like a frat boy during rush week, roll out of bed the next morning on two hours of sleep, and slam a heartfelt keynote speech at 8 a.m., then do it all over again the next day.

It’s not that Jaemin isn’t excellent at his job, too. Renjun can almost admire him for it. Almost. It’s that it comes so _easy_ to him, while Renjun is always one bad hair day and an incorrect Starbucks order from falling apart. 

And Jaemin is always charming enough to talk himself out of the debacles of his own making. Somehow his escapades that land him on the front page of tabloid filth and piss off Fox News only manage to grow his loyal fanbase. If anyone could spin a romp across the Caribbean Islands (which Renjun had to personally drag him back to D.C. by the ear from), into a _Vanity Fair_ spread about his philanthropy building low-income housing in the Dominican Republic — well, it’s Jaemin.

Which Jaemin did. The building houses thing. It wasn’t a total lie.

(Renjun may have also threatened litigation against the reporter for surveilling a First Family member. But he doesn’t kiss and tell.)

Jaemin has had a litany of “body men” — and yes, that is the unfortunate D.C. slang for political aides like Renjun, that makes him sound like a stunt double for a pro wrestler or something — that eventually quit or transferred, citing health reasons or a change of heart. In reality, he knows Jaemin chased them away screaming. He’s the only one who has stuck with Jaemin this long. 

Their relationship is built on the same foundation as most boss-and-assistant relationships in the White House are: mutual anxiety, caffeine dependence, and begrudging respect — on Renjun’s end, anyway. They’re so deeply imbalanced that somehow they work, Jaemin the chaos agent and Renjun picking up the pieces in his wake. 

Renjun should tell him to go fuck himself. He should leave, get an office job with a cubicle, decorate it with a succulent like a normal, regular person. He shouldn’t feel obligated to stay. To see the Bae administration to its end, whether that means the president is re-elected this fall and they get four more years or —

Or they lose.

Renjun shouldn’t feel a squeeze of panic in his gut at the thought of this ending so soon. 

Renjun shouldn’t feel a lot of things. 

But who would give up a chance like this? Working in the White House, for the first female Asian-American president of the United States… It’s an opportunity Renjun had grovelled for, and would do so again in a heartbeat.

He has no misconceptions about what it means to serve the Oval Office. It’s both an awe-inspiring honor to be chosen to do so, and a humbling weight of responsibility. A mantle of a country’s expectations that will crush him if he lets it. 

Renjun isn’t religious but it’s the closest thing he knows to piety. If he’s not careful, he might start believing he deserves it.

His job isn’t _easy_ , by any means. He’s often in the West Wing by six a.m. and doesn’t leave until late into the evening with only the twinges of early onset tendonitis, if he’s lucky. When he staggers home every night to his apartment in Dupont Circle that he can barely afford, he’s already falling asleep as he crosses the threshold. 

He simply doesn’t have the free time to sit around and moon over what can and can’t be. He won’t become the youngest senator in U.S. history by being _soft_.

Renjun and Jaemin have been through so much together, more — he must admit — than he’s been through with those he actually calls friends. 

And there are — incidences. Glimpses of sincerity from Jaemin in the space between seconds. So rare for Jaemin, and all the more intimate for it, even if they’re in the middle of a crowded room. Moments after Renjun makes a clever counterpoint or nails deflecting a question from a petulant reporter. 

Moments when Jaemin leans in close, one hand drifting to Renjun’s shoulder, and murmurs against his ear, “You’re doing such a good job.”

And something warm and syrupy and treasonous bubbles up in Renjun. 

He still huffs, because that’s what Jaemin expects him to do, and snaps, “I don’t need your praise.” But his voice is much softer than he intends it to come out. And he spends the rest of the day reminding his chest not to cave in. 

It’s moments like those that might make it all worth it.

This morning, however, is not one of those moments.

The hotel door chirps and swings open on silent hinges, despite how hard Renjun yanks it. He wanted more door-slamming theatrics, shaking the fleur-de-lis-printed walls like a force of nature. Not this bourgeois five-star chateau bull-shit. 

He settles on stomping his pleather wing-tips as hard as he can, as they carry him into the hotel room.

Which is in a state that Renjun can only describe as — well, not Rolling-Stones-tour-stop-level of chaos, but close. No furniture is broken as far as he can see, thank _God_. He’s not in the mood to break it to Chenle that they need thousands out of the budget for hotel debauchery. Renjun can only imagine the spreadsheets.

The bedside lamp is on the floor, though, inverting the shadows wrong-side-up. The fancy automated blinds hang gap-toothed, like someone stumbled and tried to grab them on the way down. Somewhere a tinny iPhone alarm pings on and on, unattended. 

Renjun picks across the floor, stepping over crumpled bed-sheets and empty miniature bottles of liquor. There are rumpled clothes, too, a linen shirt here, a white sock there. If Renjun knows anything about his colleagues’ drunk habits — and he knows a depressing amount — he has a good idea who they belong to.

The culprit is most likely the lump under the comforter on the massive California king. (Is it still considered a California king if they’re in France?) And Renjun has a good idea who the second huddled figure on the settee by the window is, sound asleep, mouth hanging open in an “o.”

Donghyuck doesn’t stir when Renjun whips the blanket off of him. But he starts awake with a gasp when Renjun shoves a finger up his nose. “Wherezza fire?”

“No fire. Just me.” Renjun wipes his finger on Donghyuck’s shirt. “But I can guarantee you I’m worse.”

“Renjun.” Donghyuck’s mouth falls open again in fuzzy recognition. “Hi. Listen. Before you say anything, I can tell you whatever happened last night, it was Mark’s fau—”

Donghyuck squeaks when Renjun’s hand curls around his windpipe. “One more word, and you’re gonna walk out of this hotel with that golden lamp up your ass.”

“That’s very French of you,” Donghyuck rasps.

“Do _not_ ,” Renjun says, and his hand tightens on Donghyuck’s throat to his whimper. “Chenle can have you court-martialed. He knows a guy. And I’m not above cruel and unusual punishment. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.”

Renjun reluctantly releases Donghyuck and turns to the bedside table, where the iPhone is chiming away, unbothered by the disorder of its surroundings. He shuts it off. Then he rips the comforter off the bed.

Jaemin’s eyelashes flutter in his sleep like a Disney princess. He’s curled on his side, his cheek squished into the pillow, darkened by the tiniest trace of a five o’clock shadow. Technically an eight a.m. shadow. Whatever. Renjun feels utterly neutral about it. He does not wonder what it would feel like scraping against bare skin.

Jaemin is also shirt- and pants-less, in only his Ralph Lauren boxer-briefs that leave little to the imagination. Which Renjun half-suspected from the clothes shorn across the floor.

But the imagined doesn’t come close to the very bare, very male reality in front of him. 

There’s so much... _skin_. A mole on Jaemin’s chest he’s never glimpsed and the smooth angles of naked limbs and, God have mercy, he should not be seeing this, a dark trail of hair tracing down from between Jaemin’s hips and dipping underneath his boxers’ waistband. 

Renjun’s eyes dart back to Jaemin’s face and his stomach bottoms out. Because Jaemin is suddenly very awake, with a self-satisfied grin.

Jaemin smoothes one hand down the finely-formed muscles of his chest to his hip bone. “I’d tell you a picture would last longer, but it’s too early for an international sex scandal, don’t you think?” 

Renjun drops the comforter like it burned him and jerks away. His cheeks are flaming. “I have no idea what you mean.” 

Jaemin’s voice is dark and husky with sleep. “You’re a horrible liar.” 

“Haven’t a clue,” Renjun says. You know, like a liar. 

“You should probably work on that. You’ll make a terrible politician.” 

“You,” Renjun hisses, whipping around to glare at him, “were supposed to be in the stylists’ hotel room by 7:30.” 

The mattress groans as Jaemin sits up and props himself against the headboard behind him. It’s golden and tufted velvet and utterly French. He fits well here, among the gilded furnishings of the hotel room, enthroned in ivory bed-sheets. A prince of decadence and bacchanalia like a young Dionysus. 

“I was... otherwise engaged.”

Renjun snorts. “Clearly. Do better.”

Jaemin clears his throat, but his voice is still froggy. “Well, my speech yesterday was phenomenal. Suffice to say I killed it, all thanks to Donghyuck.”

“I marvel at your ability to get cute with me after just waking up. I know it went great. I was there.”

“You think I’m cute?”

“You’re—” Endearing. Alluring. Irresistible. “You’re a fucking presidential pain in my ass.”

Jaemin’s eyes are guileless when he brings a hand to his chest. “Thank you. I’m flattered. So anyway, afterwards, Donghyuck and I thought we’d go out for his birthday.”

Renjun makes a twirling motion with his fingers to speed it up.

“Right. Well, you see. The French make this glorious stuff called cognac—”

And Renjun explodes. “I don’t give a shit that you’re a functioning alcoholic, Jaemin! I give a shit that you stood me up like an ugly prom date for your mandatory primping session before we fly back to D.C. Even though I’ve been calling you for the past half-hour trying to wake your ass up. And I had to make up a story to Chenle about why you weren’t in the stylists’ chair yet and then _bribe_ the fucking _hotel secretary_ to get me a copy of your room key cause your Secret Service cronies didn’t _have_ one.”

He runs out of air and takes a deep, gasping breath.

Jaemin’s face is ashen. “But — Donghyuck set an alarm and everything, I must have slept through it—”

“Where’s your phone, Jaemin?” Renjun asks, deadly calm. His eye has started to tic. “I’ve been calling both you and Donghyuck for thirty minutes. Where. Is. Your phone?”

Jaemin reaches back to scratch his nape, avoiding Renjun’s eyes, and the movement does beautiful things to the musculature of his bare arms. 

But Renjun is _not_ looking. He simply chooses to not notice how bedded and debauched Jaemin looks, cheeks flushed and hair in pieces. And it makes Renjun see red that he looks even better when he’s a little ashamed. 

“Um. I believe it’s somewhere in the hotel fountain.”

Renjun genuinely debates for a moment whether he should continue reaming Jaemin out, or skip straight to where he murders him and makes Donghyuck help him hide his body in the sheepskin rug. 

Jaemin must notice Renjun is struggling to keep his eyes from wandering, because a lazy grin spreads across his face. “Whenever you’re done getting an eyeful,” he says, “I’d appreciate it if you gave me some leg room so I can go take a shower. Unless you’d like to join me.”

Kill him, Renjun decides. Definitely kill him.

“If we’re done with the pillow talk,” Donghyuck yawns, “I could kill for a continental breakfast from room service right now. And a mug of tea large enough to drown a senator.”

Renjun and Jaemin stare at him. 

“Earl Gray. But I’m not picky.”

“Maybe don’t make threats on the lives of government officials in the First Son’s presence? Excuse me.” Jaemin nudges Renjun aside to slide off the bed. “It’s too early in the morning for another Watergate.” 

“Unfortunately, Jaemin may have a point."

Donghyuck huffs. “Both of your bedside manners leave something to be desired.” 

“Why are you here?” Renjun asks. “You’re not even working.”

“I,” Donghyuck says, dignified, “am fulfilling the crucial position of Supplier of Vibes.” Then he adds, like an afterthought, “And I’m the birthday bitch.” 

“There’s no time for room service, anyway.” In the glimpse Renjun can see from the bed, the en-suite bathroom’s tile floor is sopping wet, the light’s reflection glimmering in the water. 

Donghyuck says, “Not even one chocolate chip waffle?” as Renjun marches over to assess the damage. 

“If I have to lie to the Press Secretary about why the First Son isn’t on the flight back to D.C. —”

And finds Press Secretary Mark Lee, sound asleep in the white marble bathtub, snoring peacefully as a baby and cradling an empty bottle of Clicquot in his arms.

Renjun, for once, is stunned into silence. Why are all of his coworkers in some kind of delayed, neo-pubescent college boy phase? 

“Oh, man, I forgot he crashed there.” Jaemin has materialized at his side. “That’s gonna make showering a little tough.”

“Chenle is gonna castrate me,” Renjun says through gritted teeth. He sniffs Jaemin’s shoulder as he turns to leave. “And you stink like champagne.”

Jaemin follows Renjun out of the bathroom. “Wait.” He dodges in front of him, blocking his path from leaving. “Why is it your fault? Why would Chenle blame you for our being late?”

“Are you really asking me that after almost two years of being your babysitter?”

“Um.” Jaemin scratches the nape of his neck again. “How do I say yes without making you angrier?”

Donghyuck cackles in the background and there’s the sound of rushing water, a loud gurgle and a strangled yell, and Donghyuck sprints past them and out the hotel room door chased by a dripping wet Mark. 

“Convenient of him. Hyuck still owes me for that bottle of Clicquot,” Jaemin says.

“I’m done, Jaemin. I’m fucking _done_. I am _so_ over—” Renjun gestures at Jaemin, still only in his boxer-briefs, and his brain short-circuits for a moment before spitting out, “Whatever hedonistic quarter-life crisis you’re in right now.”

Renjun turns to go, but Jaemin catches him by the arm. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t expect you to understand my answer.” 

Jaemin has nothing to say to that for a beat, and the silence swells up heavy and impenetrable, all the unsaid words lying heavy on Renjun’s tongue. Jaemin is still holding his arm. 

“Maybe one of these nights,” Jaemin says slowly, carefully, “you could join us sometime. Me and Hyuck and the rest. You out of all of us deserve to have a little fun.”

Renjun balks at his grip, turns and walks to the door, pauses before leaving. He avoids Jaemin’s eyes. “I’ll see you in the stylist’s room in thirty. Preferably wearing pants.”

Jaemin remains rooted to the spot as Renjun leaves. The whisper-quiet hinges can only do so much as he lets the door slam behind him, appropriately theatrical at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ʕ♡˙ᴥ˙♡ʔ  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/haedeluna)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/haedeluna)


	2. renjun goes back into the closet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flint to tinder, spark of a match, lightning striking ground. It’s different for every person, but somehow the same. _Galvanization_. The moment you find purpose. And Renjun has been on fire since that night in front of his television screen, blinking up at the woman who he didn’t even know yet and was already his hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you can count all the hamilton references in this chapter, i'll bake you a loaf of banana bread or something idk
> 
> on a more serious note: given this fic is deeply entwined with american politics, this chapter is dedicated to the incomparable, unparalleled, notorious RBG. may her memory be a blessing. ♡

Ten years after moving to the U.S., Renjun enrolled at Georgetown because it seemed like the logical thing to do. 

America had been his home for only half his life at that point. But after yet another heated argument with his American Civics professor about the dangers of the outdated electoral college system, his adviser hinted he should try poli-sci.

During his college coursework, he found his picture of America only grew and grew. The year he turned twenty, he decided to stay the summer in D.C. rather than back in Richmond with his parents. He wanted to spend it in the city, where the people were. The reality was less romantic. He did mind-numbing data entry for grizzled administrative clerks who all had names like Sherry and Rhonda and Deb. He ate ramen for lunch and ramen with hot sauce for dinner. He made ends meet, but only just. 

One distinctly brow-beaten evening, alone in his dorm drinking a Heineken he stole from his roommate’s mini-fridge, he flicked on the TV to a scene that would soon become familiar — a political rally. It was one of President Bae’s earliest campaign speeches, before she was the president, when she was the youngest female senator to ever serve in U.S. history. 

Renjun doesn’t remember a damn thing from what she said that night, even though he sat glued to his TV screen for the forty-seven minutes she addressed the crowd in Iowa.

But he does remember one line, delivered with a small smile, one corner of her lips upturned. President Bae’s signature.

“I want to ask you, Americans.” A poignant pause. “What will be your place in history?”

The line bounced around his head as he Googled _Joohyun Bae_ and stayed up all night reading her website. It swirled in his brain as he updated his resumé on his lunch breaks. And it pulsed like a brand, an itch under his skin, as he put in his notice to his smug assistant manager, effective immediately. The next day, he pointed his car towards his new summer-long organizing fellowship for the Bae campaign in the heart of Ohio dairy country.

Flint to tinder, spark of a match, lightning striking ground. It’s different for every person, but somehow the same. _Galvanization_. The moment you find purpose. And Renjun has been on fire since that night in front of his television screen, blinking up at the woman who he didn’t even know yet and was already his hero.

History already had its eyes on Senator Bae. He wanted to be there when the rest of the world saw her, too. 

And, needless to say, his hero won. He skipped International Relations to wait outside in the frigid January air, and watched the first Korean-American president of the United States pledge herself to one nation, under God. He forgot his gloves and hat but he didn’t feel the cold. It was history and he was in the middle of it.

Renjun left Georgetown two years later with a poli-sci degree in a city lousy with poli-sci degrees and significantly worse liver function. He thought a job at the White House would be waiting for him on the other side, obviously. It was the natural order of things. Those who had given their sweat and blood for Bae 2020 were having their debts repaid, or so he thought. He had plenty of fellow campaign trail compatriots who slotted into place at the White House without an issue. Now it was Renjun’s turn to come collect. 

Unsurprisingly, those positions had since dried up. Unemployed and disenchanted, he retreated back to his childhood bedroom in Richmond with his tail between his legs. He bounced along a string of soul-crushing, dead-end internships, even though he’d had his heart set on the West Wing. Something meaningful, something he could find pride in showing up to the office everyday. 

The world has a funny way of giving you what you want in a way you never expected.

He was debating eating a fat slice of humble pie and taking a bartending position at the Columbia Room, just to be in D.C. again, when he got a phone call. 

It was from Donghyuck, one of the other organizers he’d met back in Ohio, had canvassed streets and streets and streets with together, had laughed and eaten midnight fast food in parked cars together. 

Donghyuck wasn’t a speechwriter yet, but had nabbed a coveted position in communications. Renjun couldn’t find it in himself to hate him for doing what he couldn’t.

“I have something for you,” Donghyuck said. “You remember Chenle, right?”

How could he forget? Chenle had been the champion of the Bae 2020 trail, second only to President Bae herself, her right-hand man since even before Iowa when she was a scrappy up-and-comer from the Bronx.

“He’s looking for someone to fill a position ASAP. The guy who had it before packed up and left pretty quickly, it seems like.”

“Tell me,” Renjun said, breathless. “I’ll take anything.”

“It’s not ideal.” He could hear the grimace in Donghyuck’s voice. “But if you want it, it’s yours.”

And those well-trodden words were back, like a firebrand in Renjun’s veins. A song lyric he could never quite get out of his head. _What will be your place in history?_

Renjun could almost smell the ozone.

“Fuck it,” he said. “I’m in.”

Somehow, Jaemin makes it in time to the private airway in France. “I told you to have faith,” he purrs in Renjun’s ear as he follows him up Air Force One’s stairs. But he disappears into the President’s Suite on the flight back to D.C. 

And that suits Renjun fine. Perfectly fine. He isn’t interested in spending another second in Jaemin’s infuriating presence anyway. And the flight back gives him an uninterrupted stretch of time to have a good, proper fume. 

He pulls out his fancy noise-cancelling headphones and dives into answering emails with a vengeance. The jelly candies, the Korean brand Renjun orders online specifically for Jaemin, stay in his bag, uneaten.

And the next thing he knows, Air Force One is landing on the tarmac and Chenle gives everyone the rest of the weekend off. 

It’s a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t mean much for Renjun. His life is not in his own hands — he signed it over the day he walked into the West Wing. Days off for Renjun mean a constant state of pre-anxiety with his work phone tenanting his pocket. No matter what plans he makes for the day, he has to be ready to drop everything and report to the White House at a moment’s notice. 

It’s hard to predict when Renjun will be called in, because Jaemin’s schedule is so variable. Jaemin’s predecessors set an even more diverse precedent than his mother’s position. Some ran away screaming from politics the minute their parents handed off the keys to the White House. Some went on to become activists or political pundits or political pundits pretending to be children’s book authors. The First Daughter Yerim, Jaemin’s older sister, is currently at Stanford studying law.

Jaemin decided to take a more hands-on approach. Although he wasn’t an official staff member, he championed his mother’s campaign trail, as they criss-crossed the nation with nothing but a cramped tour bus and a dream for something greater. After Jaemin’s remarks at her inauguration went viral on Youtube with over 25 million views, the White House team encouraged him to continue, even after his mother took office. 

It didn’t hurt that at twenty years old, he’d become the nation’s sex symbol along the way and pulled almost as many crowds as the president herself. 

Jaemin doesn’t make every engagement his mom attends. But he does join her often, especially if there’s speeches to be made and the press to dazzle. Which there always are both. He’s a highly-anticipated staple at every year’s Correspondent’s Dinner, a regular guest on the late-night talk show circuit, and has even dropped in on SNL episodes, much to his mother’s chagrin.

And his material — well, Renjun’s no expert, but it’s _good_. He disappears somewhere on West Exec with Donghyuck and the other speechwriters for hours at a time, to research statistics and workshop the funny bits. 

Sometimes he even makes appearances in his mom’s stead, if a last minute conflict pops up and she can’t make it. In those cases, Jaemin’s star power glows in full megawatt strength without anyone else there to overshadow its force.

Today is one of those appearances. 

“‘And when he came to the place where the wild things are,’” Jaemin reads in his exaggerated kindergarten-teacher voice, slow and sing-song, “‘they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth.’”

“Teeths!” one little boy in the front row shouts, deaf to his mother’s hushing from the sidelines. “I lost one of my teeths yesterday!” 

He pulls his lip down to show the gap in his pearly whites. Jaemin pauses the story to politely coo and praise.

Warm afternoon sunlight streams through the large windows of the first-grade classroom, where Jaemin is holding court with a crowd of very rowdy six-year-olds. (Is there any other type of six-year-old?) Renjun and the other staffers are squeezed in the back of the classroom to make space for parents and reporters, all listening with rapt attention to Jaemin’s story time. 

Except for Chenle. His fingers are a blur typing on two phones, one in each hand. 

It’s been a few weeks since what Renjun has been mentally referring to as the French Incident. A regrettably saucier-sounding name for what actually occurred. Renjun and Jaemin still aren’t speaking beyond what’s required of their job duties. Renjun skirts around him in elaborate social acrobatics to avoid it. 

And Jaemin doesn’t sign off his emails to him with his usual bunny emoji. Renjun always begged him to stop using emojis in professional emails, but now that he’s stopped, it’s mildly devastating. 

Renjun shifts his weight from one foot to the other, trying to ease the stiffness in his legs without drawing attention to himself. Jaemin and the kids are on book four at this point and his feet are starting to go numb.

“‘—and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.’” Jaemin looks up from the page, bright-eyed, to the children clustered around his legs. “How scary!” 

The kids giggle and roll their eyes, like they’re far too grown up at six years old to be scared of monsters anymore. 

“Are you guys wild things too?”

The kids shriek at a level that Renjun would wince at if it weren’t so adorable.

“Then can everyone show me your terrible teeth and your terrible claws? Like this!” Jaemin bares his teeth, curls his fingers into claws, and silently growls, pouncing out of his chair to tickle the same boy who showed him his “teeths.” The boy shrieks in glee.

And the kids — well, the kids go fucking ballistic, roaring and gnashing their teeth, grabbing each other before toppling over squealing into puppy piles. It garners a delighted laugh from the parents watching, and even from a few of the cameramen recording in the corners of the classroom.

Jaemin scoops up the little boy with the missing tooth and places him gently on his knee before returning to the story, looking self-satisfied. The dimple-cheeked boy stares up at him, hanging on to his every word, clutching the front of Jaemin’s button-down with one chubby hand.

Renjun can already picture the Buzzfeed headlines. “First Son Jaemin Na Had Story Time with Little Kids, and Our Ovaries Are, Like, Totally Exploding Right Now.”

It’s hard to believe that this is the same man who was hungover and half-naked in a French four-poster just weeks ago. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.

It’s fine. Just fine, really, that Jaemin loves kids. That he interacts with them with the single-minded compassion and gentle hand of someone who loves them, truly adores spending time with them. It’s nothing at all, really, that Renjun knows this would translate into being a patient and devoted father one day. He’s drowning in an ocean of fine.

Renjun doesn’t wonder if he has his future children’s names picked out or anything. Because that would be absurd. 

He thinks he’s coming unhinged.

Jaemin finishes the story, “‘And into the night of his very own room, where he found his supper waiting for him, and it was still hot,’” and closes the book. The kids immediately start whining, “Another! Read another!” 

“No more today, babies,” he says to a chorus of devastated sighs. “But I wish I could stay here and read to you all day. I promise I’ll come back very, very soon.” 

The first-graders brighten up, though, when Jaemin hands out a lollipop to each of them, and they return to their desks with huge grins and a spring in their step.

“Thank you, Mr. Na, for giving us a story-time.” The first-grade teacher steps back into his place at the front of the classroom. He’s a slender, sweet-faced young man with a name-tag that reads, “Mr. Liu.” 

Jaemin beams at him. Mr. Liu grins back for a beat too long, then pink dusts his cheeks as he snaps back to attention. 

“Um — right. And, class, please say thank you to Mr. Na for the wonderful story!”

The kids sing a thank you in unison, and suddenly Chenle’s grip is vice-like on Renjun’s shoulder and he murmurs into his ear, “We have a problem.”

Renjun’s spine instantly goes straight. “Tell me.”

“Surveillance spotted an unidentified civilian on the perimeter of the building outside. Dark clothes, heavy jacket despite the weather. Could be concealed carry.”

“Are you positive? There has to be an explanation.”

Chenle’s tone is grim. “We can’t be sure. But I’m taking every precaution, Renjun.”

 _Not here_ , Renjun thinks, eyes darting to the small, shining faces in the desks around him. _Please, not here._

“I just sent a team of plainclothes agents to secure it. But I need you to be ready if we have to make a hasty exit. And if things get ugly—”

“They won’t.” The lurch of anxiety in Renjun’s stomach makes his voice tremulous. “Don’t even say that.” 

He dabs the sweat beginning to bead at his hairline with his blazer sleeve. 

Mr. Liu’s words sound like they’re coming from underwater, the thud of Renjun’s sky-rocketing heartbeat drowning them out. “Without Mr. Na and President Bae’s work in funding this school — and Mr. Na the senior, of course, may he rest in peace — none of this would be possible.” 

Jaemin’s spine stiffens a little as it always does when his father is mentioned. But his press-smile stays frozen in place.

“The Na-Bae family’s commitment to accessible, quality education for inner-city schools such as ours — well, it means teachers like me get to earn our living without worrying about having enough pencils or textbooks to go around. And we’re so grateful for that every single day.” Oblivious, Mr. Liu is addressing the class but his eyes are glued to Jaemin, bright and earnest, with his hands clasped in front of his chest. 

Jaemin nods, princely, and says, “The pleasure is mine.”

Mr. Liu flushes almost purple. If Renjun’s nerves weren’t fraying at the seams, he would almost sympathize with the poor guy. 

“And now,” Mr. Liu says, “if the principal would like to say a few wo—”

When the huge _boom_ explodes through the classroom, Renjun doesn’t think.

He takes only a second to scan the room, checking that no one has collapsed. His body snaps to action before he can even register it moving. 

He’s across the classroom in the space of a breath, sending empty desks crashing in his haste, grabbing Jaemin by the arm and dragging him bodily out the door.

There’s no sound. Everything is numb. The blood pulsing in Renjun’s ears smothers any noise. Until it all rushes into focus at once: the shouting of parents, the panicked sobbing of children, the scream of metal chairs across linoleum tile, Chenle’s voice booming louder than anyone’s, barking out orders to the Secret Service in the room. 

Then it all cuts off in an instant as the classroom door slams behind them. 

Jaemin only has the time to gasp, “Where are we g—?” before Renjun is shoving him headfirst down the empty hallway and through the first door he sees — a supply closet. He whips the door closed behind them with a _chunk_. It bathes them both in almost complete darkness.

The momentum sends Jaemin careening and he stumbles, falling backwards and crashing with a swear. He groans in pain. 

“That’s gonna leave a bruise.” He shifts and winces. “And I think I just landed in a mop bucket.”

“Hush.” Renjun presses his ear against the door, straining to make out what’s going on. But he can only hear Jaemin’s rustling and occasional curse. 

“You really had to go and choose the most cliché of hiding places, didn’t you?”

“Can you shut the fuck up for once, please? I’m trying to listen.”

“Oh, so now you decide you’re talking to me? All it takes is a literal crisis situation to get you to stop pretending I don’t exist. Duly noted.”

“What are you talking about?”

The mop bucket clatters and Jaemin groans again, and Renjun imagines with satisfaction that Jaemin fell out of it. 

“You’ve been feigning deaf whenever I’ve tried to talk to you since Normandy.”

“Oh, my God. This is literally _last_ on the list of times when it’s appropriate to bring up petty coworker drama.” 

“When’s first on the list?” Renjun can’t see Jaemin’s face, but he’s ninety-nine percent certain he’s quirking a sardonic brow. Renjun tried to lift one brow like that once and Donghyuck asked him if he was constipated. “And where are you? I can’t see a damn thing.”

“Reach your hand out, I’m right here. And I don’t know, around the water cooler. For the record, _you_ were avoiding _me_. Now stop distracting me.”

Then Renjun feels a large hand graze against him and warm breath prickle the back of his neck. “Do you find me distracting?” 

Renjun elbows him with all of his strength and Jaemin wheezes. “You just grabbed my _ass_ , you idiot.” His voice is much higher than normal.

A pregnant pause. “Sorry. That was — unintentional. My ass-grabbing is usually consensual.”

“Oh, I’m _sure._ There’s nothing I’d rather talk about more than your ass-grabbing.” Renjun loosens his collar that feels too warm and tight all of a sudden. “Can you be useful and see if you hear anything?”

Jaemin shuffles closer to his side. As his eyes adjust to the dark, Renjun only sees his faint outline. But he can feel the warmth of his body, the curious, tingling sensation across his skin of somebody very close but not quite touching. 

The closet feels smaller and smaller every anxious second that ticks by. 

“You’re worried about me.” 

Leave it to Jaemin to think of himself first. “Of course I’m worried about you,” Renjun snaps. “If you died, I’m out of a job. I can’t be an assistant to a dead man.” He pauses. “Not unless this was, like, a Stephen King novel.” 

“What do you think the noise was?”

“It was probably just an accident or something blowing up nearby. Electrical explosions happen all the time.”

“And that’s why you hauled me in here like your ass was on fire.”

Renjun has nothing to counter that with. “Feels like you’re weirdly fixated on my ass today.”

Jaemin coughs a surprised chuckle. The door’s hinges protest when Rejun hears him sag against it with a deep sigh. His voice is smaller than before. “Do you think the kids are all right?”

Renjun doesn’t know. He didn’t see any blood or a broken window, but it’s impossible to be sure — everything happened so fast. It’s harder to lie to Jaemin like this, when there’s nothing between them except the space of a breath in the darkness. 

“Everything’s going to be okay.” His words feel lousy and useless even as he says them. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters right now.” 

“If anything happens to them, or anybody in that room, because of me—” Jaemin makes a half-aborted noise that sounds too close to a sob. “I should never have come here today.”

Renjun’s heart squeezes, aching. 

Before he can consider all the reasons why it’s a bad idea — before he can second guess himself — he breaches the distance between them and pulls Jaemin to him. He twines his arms around Jaemin’s shoulders. 

Jaemin goes deadly still for a heartbeat, and Renjun is certain he’s overstepped an unspoken boundary. 

And then his arms are lacing around Renjun’s back, pulling him closer. 

His chin is the perfect height to slot into Renjun’s shoulder. Like it was made for him.

“Just stop.” If Renjun says it with enough force, maybe he can change whatever’s happening out there right now with his willpower alone. “Don’t go down that road. It won’t lead you to a good place.” 

Jaemin takes a deep, shuddering breath that Renjun feels in his own chest. His words are labored. “I don’t know how. How to turn it off. How to not — feel.”

“Just — close your eyes and focus on where you are. Focus on what you feel, physically.” Renjun smoothes a hand down the nape of his neck, steady but gentle. An anchor. 

“Trust me,” barely a breath of air, “I am.”

“Listen to my voice. You’re here, with me. We’re in this gross, musty supply closet together that smells like Clorox and rat poop.”

It’s enough to draw a chuckle out of Jaemin. “You’re good at this.” 

“Soothing bratty First Sons in emergencies? I know. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Jaemin laughs quietly again and buries his face in Renjun’s shoulder, so he’s muffled when he says, “Yes. That.” 

He traces circles with his thumbs against the small of Renjun’s back. 

“And you’re good at making me feel safe.” 

And if that isn’t enough to make Renjun’s cheeks singe with heat — well, Renjun was never one of God’s strongest soldiers. So sue him. More stalwart men then Renjun would crumble under the persuasiveness of Jaemin’s voice against his neck and his hands on his back. 

His world narrows to the warm points where his body presses against Jaemin, lean and taut everywhere that Renjun is softer, more pliant.

Renjun is holding his breath. He doesn’t remember when he started.

It’s dangerous territory he’s toeing. It should feel wrong, like taking advantage of Jaemin’s distress. Jaemin shouldn’t fit perfectly in his arms like he’s always been meant to be there.

Renjun should feel guilty. He should push him away.

He combs his fingertips gently through the hair at Jaemin’s nape, instead.

“I’m still mad at you, you know.” But it’s weak, without cruelty. Jaemin’s hands trailing lower down his back are distressing. “Just because I’m hugging you doesn’t mean I’m not still mad.”

Jaemin chuckles and it rumbles in his throat against Renjun’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

A moment where Renjun does nothing but hold him, and allows himself to be held, and it’s more than enough and not nearly enough, all jumbled up at once.

“Renjun.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I need to—”

Light floods the closet when the door swings open, a few Secret Service agents in their head-to-toe black and Chenle in the center, expression grim. 

“Up and at ‘em, lovebirds.”

Renjun and Jaemin spring apart. 

Chenle’s eyebrows disappear beneath his bangs. He gives them both a onceover, lingering for a moment on Renjun, his stare a question. Renjun resolutely studies the grain in the hardwood floor. 

Jaemin, unabashed, surges forward and grabs Chenle’s arm. “What happened? Are the children safe?”

Chenle is immediately all business again. “It was a car backfiring on the street outside. Nothing but a loud noise. Everything is handled.”

“What about the unidentified person?” Renjun asks. “Did you arrest—?”

“Who?” Jaemin frowns. “Did I miss something?”

“Guys. It’s _fine_.” Chenle throws up his hands, pacifying. “Just a random passerby. It was all a coincidence that the car went off at the same time.” He sobers. “Although I do have a lot of very angry parents from my overreacting. This will need damage control.”

Jaemin sighs like he’s been holding it in for a while. “I’ll take care of it. Send them all Edible Arrangements or something. ‘Please forgive us for traumatizing your children. Here’s some carved cantaloupe.’”

“Oh, trust me. They’re the last thing from traumatized. Once everything calmed down, the kids thought it was awesome that Mr. Na was, uh—” Chenle hems for a moment. “Saved by his bodyguard.”

Renjun glances at Jaemin then quickly away, but not before he sees Jaemin’s ears flush a brilliant shade of red. It’s comforting not to be the one blushing for once.

“Good. Better to have overreacted than the opposite.” Renjun crosses his arms, desperate to save face with taking initiative and brusque professionalism. “But we’re making some changes. Speaking of bodyguards, Jaemin needs a real one. One assigned to have eyes on him and him alone.” 

“Do I get any say in the matter?” 

“No,” Renjun and Chenle say in unison.

Chenle turns on his heel and whisks back up the hallway, forcing Renjun and Jaemin and the agents tailing them to jog to keep up. “Jaemin already has his private security detail.”

“I _know_ that. But as proved by today, they’re not enough. I’m talking about a personal bodyguard who never leaves his side, day in and day out.”

“Why?” Chenle quips in Mandarin. “You volunteering for the position?” 

Renjun calls him a deeply offensive word in Mandarin and Chenle bursts into laughter. 

“I hate when you two do that,” Jaemin grumbles. “It’s no fun being a third-wheel.”

Renjun stops abruptly, making everyone halt too, and Jaemin bumps into his back. “What he _needs_ is a Johnny.”

Chenle makes an inpatient noise. “Yes, and Johnny is President Bae’s chief security officer, because he’s the best there is and she’s the leader of the fucking country. I don’t have the budget to be handing out personal bodyguards to anyone who asks.”

“Fuck the budget, Chenle! He’s not just anyone!” Renjun is almost shouting now, echoing in the large hallway, and he has no intentions of reeling it in. “He was just a sitting duck in the middle of that classroom, and if someone had actually decided to—” He stops, unable to continue.

Jaemin lays a steadying hand on his arm, reminding Renjun to breathe, and he focuses on his presence at his side. 

“But nothing happened, right? We’re safe,” Jaemin says.

The red in his vision clears after a moment. 

And Chenle is staring like he’s seeing Renjun in a new light, as something entirely different from moments before.

“Well. If you feel that strongly about it.” Chenle picks an imaginary piece of dust from his suit jacket. “I’ll see what I can do.”

All the air leaves Renjun’s lungs in a grateful sigh. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“No promises. You know what I always say.”

Renjun nods curtly. “Underpromise, overdeliver. I know.”

Jaemin waits until Chenle has hastened away and back into the classroom, where parents are frog-marching their children out the door. Chenle was right — from most of their faces, they are _not_ happy with their afternoon story time experience. Renjun doesn’t blame them.

Then Jaemin says low so only Renjun can hear, “You know, I think I like it when you get all overprotective.”

Renjun shoves him into a locker.

Renjun doesn’t see Jaemin face-to-face for several days. But the morning after the elementary school debacle, there’s a Post-It note on his desk when he returns to it. 

It reads, in a small, spiky hand, _Dear Germany, Let’s put an end to this war. Please accept this_ pièce de résistance. _Sincerely, France,_ with an atrociously drawn bunny in place of a signature.

 _I think you mean armistice,_ Renjun texts Jaemin after he finds it.

It’s not until half-an-hour later that Jaemin responds. _Sorry, I don’t speak insufferable know-it-all_. And Renjun snorts so loud that Chenle boots him out of the morning staff briefing.

In Jaemin’s absence, Renjun buries himself in the paperwork piling up in his inbox. But memories rise, unbidden, every time he tries to concentrate: Jaemin’s hands on his waist. Jaemin’s broad chest and shoulders against him, eclipsing his own. Jaemin mouthing along his neck, saying, _You’re good at this. Yes, that._

He’s not very productive, to no one’s surprise. 

“You need to get _laid_ , dude. Like yesterday,” says Donghyuck, ever the sage adviser, from his perch on top of Renjun’s cluttered desk. 

Renjun stabs the side of Donghyuck’s butt with his pen just to hear him hiss. He swats Renjun away with his yellow legal pad. It’s covered in his messy scrawl with chunks of text scratched out, words bleeding into the margins. 

Drafting President Bae’s next speech, Renjun knows. They follow the same format every time, hit the same carefully-crafted beats, but are tweaked based on what will resonate with the audience it’s being delivered to. The constituent needs of inner-city Californians are drastically different from those of rural Pennsylvanians. 

But Donghyuck can’t write President Bae’s campaign speeches. It’s illegal, as a White House employee. Renjun knows this irks Donghyuck, knows that he’s chomping at the bit to unleash his snark on the election trail. It’s Donghyuck’s trademark. When you need a biting retort to something the Republican candidate said in a way that both undercuts his policy and makes him look like a fumbling dumbass, you call Donghyuck.

“That pen better not have been open, you fucker. These pants are Burberry.”

“Now you sound like Chenle.” Renjun pushes away the stack of invoices and stretches his arms over his head with a groan. His stiff neck cricks after being bent at an angle for hours. “Don’t you have enough cash from all your sugar daddies to buy yourself a new pair?”

“One, singular sugar daddy, thank you very much. What am I to you, some hussy?”

“Do you want my honest answer to that question?” 

Donghyuck smirks, his rare dimple appearing. “Anyway, no, because he dumped me for some other pretty young thing. Now I’m broke and single, just like you.”

“Misery loves company, I guess.”

“And _you_ love to wallow in it.” Donghyuck snatches the pen from his hands mid-writing. Renjun huffs in protest. “Like I said, you need it bad, dude.”

Renjun rubs his eyes, banishing the sleep from them. The low lamplight and shadowy shapes of his office blur into streaks of color as he does. 

His desk is an island floating in a sea of cabinet drawers, mismatched old furniture, and cardboard boxes stuffed to the brim with aging, yellowed papers. It’s basically a storage closet, barely repurposed into an office space, tucked away in the basement of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Renjun isn’t high enough on the totem pole for his desk to be in the West Wing itself. But there’s something comforting in the EEOB’s old-carpet smell and mid-century cornices. 

“And how exactly do you know the inner workings of my libido, Donghyuck?”

“Because I’ve known you for years now, and your tells are, like, too obvious. You look through everything as if it’s not there ‘cause your mind’s somewhere else, just a thousand-yard stare all the way. Like a horny zombie.”

“Then I guess I should go get laid then.” Renjun yawns. Definitely not tonight. Or anytime in the foreseeable future, if he’s being brutally honest with himself. But the concept, that it’s that straight-forward, is comforting. 

In practice it’s a different story.

“See, you always say that, and then I’m like, ‘Junie, let’s go out! It’s half-price margs at Uno Más tonight!’ And then you make up some bullshit about being tired and go straight home from work. And presumably jack off to Harry Styles’s _Rolling Stones_ cover or something. Based on your taste.” 

“Excuse you, if I was going to jack off to anything Harry Styles, it would be his photoshoot in _Beauty Papers_ , thank you very much.”

“The one where he’s in fishnets? You have some weird kinks, dude.”

“Thanks. And it’s not bullshit, I really am exhausted. I don’t know what to tell you, Hyuck. I just don’t vibe like that.” He glances at his watch. “Speaking of going home, it’s already eleven. If I have to answer another strongly-worded memo from a Republican senator about people not deserving a living wage, I’m gonna go super saiyan.”

Donghyuck’s nose crinkles cutely in disgust. “Don’t do that. Make anime references. It really doesn’t help the whole single thing.” 

After Renjun packs up, Donghyuck bounds up and bars the doorway, blocking Renjun from leaving. 

“Save it. I’ve had a long week.” Understatement of the century.

“That’s exactly what I’m _saying_ , dude. Come out with me and you can grind out that workplace anxiety underneath somebody. Or on top. Whatever floats your ballot.”

Renjun stops short. “Donghyuck, is this your elaborate plan to sleep with me? Cause it kind of feels that way.”

“Babe, if I were trying to sleep with you, you wouldn’t have a doubt in your mind about it.” But Donghyuck grabs his bag from the hook, tugs on his ball cap, and follows Renjun out the door, a hint that he’s resigned to his fate. “You need to cut loose eventually or it’s all gonna build up inside and explode when you least expect it.”

“Nothing is—” Renjun sighs. “It’s just — not like that. For me. And I do fine on my own without a wingman.”

“Really? Name the last time you interacted with somebody you’d consider dating. Not even went out with. Just _talked_ to.”

Jaemin’s hands roaming over him in the dark, drifting across his back, voice low in his ear. _You’re good at this._

Renjun shuts down that train of thought before it can worm any deeper into his subconsciousness. 

“That’s none of your business,” he says primly. 

“The non-answer tells me just as much as a real answer, you know.” 

The late June night air is pleasantly mellow, as they pad down the grand concrete stairs of the EEOB and step out onto Seventeenth. The capital’s streets are still vibrant with life, tourists on the sidewalks and night taxis whizzing by despite the late hour. Donghyuck throws an arm around Renjun’s shoulders and steers him down the sidewalk.

“So what’s stopping you?” Donghyuck asks. “You got a secret flame somewhere you’re hiding from me? A forbidden paramour?” He nudges Renjun, playful.

The “forbidden” part hits a little too close to home for comfort. “I’m not a closet case, Hyuck, if I had a boyfriend, you’d know about it.”

Donghyuck hums a song Renjun can’t name as they cut through the green of Lafayette Square to their bus stop, passing the massive statue of Andrew Jackson on his steed. 

He tips his hat mockingly at Renjun. Renjun glares at him. 

“What’re you looking at?”

“Nothing.” Renjun shakes his head. Taking out his grievances on statues of dead racists. Not a stable indicator of mental health. “What I was saying earlier — it’s not, like, a need for me. Going out and dancing and taking somebody home whenever I need to unwind. Hookups are always exciting in theory and sweaty and depressing in practice.”

“Maybe for _you_.”

The small crowd at their stop jostles them in their hurry as the bus pulls up to the curb. Donghyuck and Renjun hang back and slip into the very last row once everyone’s packed into their seats.

“You’re into monogamy. I get it.” Donghyuck leans his head onto Renjun’s shoulder. What is it about Renjun’s shoulders that everyone around him assumes they’re free real estate? “Doesn’t mean you have to be a _single_ monogamist. You can still meet people. At introvert-y places, like bookstores or wine tastings or whatever pretentious people do.” 

“Like me, you mean? Why are you reporting live from my business like this? I go on dates! I’m not a shut-in.”

“You haven’t been on a date in the two years we’ve worked together. And not in Ohio, either.” 

“Do you have it marked in your Outlook calendar or something? A few years are nothing. The acceptable time frames for being single or not single are a social construct.”

Donghyuck squishes Renjun’s cheek, blatantly trying to get a rise out of him. It’s not going to work. “And I know you hate dating apps, even though you never delete them off your phone, so we need to think of someone we know in real life.” Donghyuck brightens. “What about the stenographer? He’s kind of cute.”

“Jeno? He’s not kind of cute, he’s Adonis. But no.”

“Why not? You just said he was a demigod!”

“I have eyes. Isn’t he more your type?”

Donghyuck wrinkles his nose again, but it’s thoughtful. “In what way?”

“Let’s see — Yukhei, Johnny, your ex-sugar daddy. You like them all manly and robust like the Brawny mascot. What was his name?”

“The Brawny mascot?”

“Your ex-sugar daddy, smart-ass.”

“Jaehyun.” Donghyuck smiles fondly at the memory. “But that’s where your theory falls apart. Chenle isn’t what I would call ‘brawny.’”

“Chenle was only one time. Seriously, you sleep with a straight guy once and it’s, like, all you can talk about for months.”

Donghyuck fixes him with an even look. “Renjun, if you think Chenle is straight, your gaydar is even more atrocious than I thought. The man collects _Birkins_. For _fun_.”

“Wait, really?” 

“Yes, idiot. He definitely wasn’t straight when he had his mouth on my—”

Donghyuck’s words are, thankfully, drowned out by the deafening screech of the bus’s brakes. They’re quiet for a moment as passengers filter out onto M Street, leaving the bus half-full.

Donghyuck looks up at him, almost coy, through his eyelashes. Renjun knows what he’s going to ask before he asks it. He suspects Donghyuck has been building up to it all along. 

“What about Jaemin?”

A rush of heat Renjun can’t explain flashes up his spine. The bus turns a corner a little too sharp, and Renjun jerks into Donghyuck from the inertia. 

“Right. Dating the president’s son. Because there aren’t a hundred reasons that could backfire at all.”

Donghyuck sits up and turns to face him. “But you didn’t immediately say no, just now.”

“Then consider this my answer.” Renjun leans close and flicks Donghyuck’s forehead without mercy, to his yelp. “ _No._ ”

Donghyuck rubs the spot he flicked, buffing away the hurt. “You’ve never even considered it? Not even once?”

He has. Usually in the early, gray hours of the morning caught between sleeping and waking, only when he’s been drinking. He thinks about Jaemin a lot when he’s been drinking.

The answer must be written all over his face, because Donghyuck settles back into his shoulder with considerably more smugness than before. “That’s what I thought.”

“It’s not a good idea, Hyuck.” Renjun’s throat is thick. “Imagine if it got out that the president’s kid was sleeping with his assistant. How that would look to an outside eye.”

“Fuck them,” Donghyuck says, suddenly fiery. “Fuck anyone who has shit to say. They’re bigots and therefore worthless. End of story.”

“It’s not just the hate. I get enough of that already being a minority in this country. But I’d never get a job anywhere near politics again. Both Jaemin and I would become the media’s punching bags for the rest of our lives.” He inhales, slow and shaky. “It would be exactly the type of sex scandal that would ruin my career, Jaemin’s career, and probably his mother’s, too. She’s on thin ice as it is with the election coming up.”

Donghyuck tugs at his own earlobe, thinking hard. “I hate when you’re right about everything,” he says, but his voice is small.

“And this is all assuming Jaemin feels — has feelings for me.”

“What if he did?” Donghyuck hedges. “What if he did have feelings for you? What then?”

Renjun is saved from having to answer when the bus pulls to a halt in Dupont Circle.

“This is my stop, loverboy.” Renjun knocks Donghyuck off his shoulder. 

Before he can rise from his seat, Donghyuck catches him by the wrist. 

The street lamps burnish the soft angles of Donghyuck’s cheeks, the tips of his ears slightly smushed by his ball cap. And Renjun is suddenly struck by how much he’s grown in the years he’s known Donghyuck, ever since Ohio, the last vestiges of chubby-cheeked youth gone and leaving an adult behind. When did that happen? Has he grown that much, too? Who is this new man in front of him? Renjun never got to say goodbye. 

Then Donghyuck pinches both his cheeks again, hard enough to bruise. “I just want you to be happy, you hopeless-romantic dumbass.”

Renjun shakes Donghyuck off with a laugh, bidding his goodbyes. He steps off the bus and ventures the ten-minute walk back to his apartment, the street lamps lighting his way. It’s quiet uptown. The night air feels wet and lies heavy on his skin, like a rainstorm is on the way.

His door snicks as he enters his dark apartment. The silence is deafening, save for only the low hum of his refrigerator and the indescribable sound of his furniture displacing the air. 

It’s not that people don’t ask Renjun out. 

And not the “let’s get coffee” type of asking out in D.C., where they’re really just trying to suss out your connections, determine how beneficial you are to their own career growth, and proceed to step on you like just another rung on the career ladder. They ask him out. On real dates. 

Frankly, plenty of people try to take Renjun home. Contrary to popular belief, the government isn’t made up entirely of blue-haired baby boomers. D.C.’s political sphere is vibrant with attractive, young professionals more than willing to buy Renjun a sidecar, extra sugar.

And Renjun is fully aware that he is handsome when he actually has the energy to brush his hair, and good at making people laugh. And he works at the White House. Which is a high enough degree of celebrity, however tangential, to nab him a top-ten spot on D.C.’s most eligible bachelor’s list. 

The list is literal, by the way. The _Hill_ , one of D.C.’s most popular publications, puts out their “50 Most Beautiful” of the city every summer. The White House younger staffers jockey for nominations in a yearly exercise of superficiality. Renjun, despite never self-nominating, is weirdly proud to say that he’s made the list two years in a row.

Jaemin nabs number one every single year. Bastard.

So it’s not that he doesn’t have options. Even if he had the time in his schedule to date. Which he doesn’t. Meeting people in D.C. is easy. It’s finding the time to actually _see_ them that’s the hard part. Most White House staffers are either already married (Mark), sleep with their coworkers (Donghyuck), or languish in sexual frustration (guess who). 

But something stops him each time. 

Draws him up short when someone shyly invites him to the indie film playing at Landmark’s E Street, or to a picnic on the Tidal Basin. 

Something with broad shoulders and large hands and long eyelashes and a deep, husky voice in his ear that replays, over and over, when Renjun is trying to fall asleep. 

Something with a sharp jaw that pushes forward when he’s doubling down on teasing Renjun into a stammering blush. 

That keeps him hanging on the edge of anticipation with every word, never knowing what he’ll say next, never knowing what he might draw out of Renjun to say, too. 

That has a habit of drifting his hand to Renjun’s forearm under the table when he’s hotly contesting policy rollouts in the Cabinet Room, his grip tightening around Renjun’s wrist as his passion in the debate rises. 

That challenges him, talks back to him exactly the way Renjun likes. The way that makes heat spark across his skin and coil inside him, impatient and molten. 

Something that grates on his every nerve and makes him feel fully, brilliantly alive.

That something stops him every damn time.


	3. ill news is wing'd with fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chenle steeples his fingers, all business. No need to turn on Chief of Staff mode — he never turns it off. “I assume you all have seen the article about Jaemin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i rewrote this chapter 3 times so i hope it was worth it! please let me know what you think!! mwah

Humid June slides into stickier July, and Renjun’s morning bus ride becomes not so much a commute, as a race against his own body’s sweat response. Contrary to popular belief, D.C. was not built on a swamp. But it sure as fuck seems like it. In Jos. A Bank and brogues, Renjun feels like he’s being char-boiled alive on the streets of Capitol Hill.

With the new month comes rising tension about the debt ceiling. The Speaker of the House is refusing to raise it if President Bae doesn’t secede to the Republican party’s demands, like a bad hostage thriller, and cut trillions of dollars to federal programs — which benefits literally no one. (That never seems to matter.)

And the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator Clark Bravard, a smarmy, white-toothed, trust fund type from Wichita, is using his every campaign stop to add fuel to the flames. The same Clark Bravard who floated conspiracy theories about POTUS colluding with North Korea and corrupting American democracy from the inside out. Or something like that. The hateful slander about President Bae is endless, attacking everything from her race to her gender to the price of her haircuts. Renjun can hardly keep track of it all. 

Bravard should really step it up a notch. President Bae is _South_ Korean. At least make your bigotry accurate.

And the debt ceiling threats are nothing new. It’s a classic form of protest that Renjun sees recycled every few years, more about conservatives dangling an ultimatum over the President’s head in a bizarre pissing contest than anything else. 

But it’s no low-stakes tug-of-war. If the Speaker hits the self-destruct button, the American financial system shits the bed. And then the global economy falls apart. No biggie.

It’s a wonder Renjun doesn’t have more gray hairs.

The weird thing about the debt ceiling crisis is that it leaves Renjun with a lighter workload than usual. Jaemin has no campaign appearances to make when his mother is in stalemate negotiations all day long. It’s disorienting without the never-ending stream of emails cascading into his inbox. So much so, he almost drops his mocha when his phone pings that morning.

It’s from Chenle. There’s no description, just a cryptic subject line — _Situation Room, 8 a.m. Priority: highest._

As he jogs across the flagstones of the colonnade, unease dogs Renjun’s steps like — well, like a very persistent dog. Emergency meetings in the Situation Room with fifteen minutes’ notice don’t just happen. It’s in the name — _situations_ happen there, whether it’s planning the White House response to a domestic terrorist attack, or coordinating aid for a natural disaster. He pulls out his phone and checks his email, refreshes the trending page on Twitter. Nothing dire jumps out at him. 

What this meeting could be about, Renjun has no idea.

He stumbles through the door three minutes late. The Situation Room is radically different from Renjun’s usual meeting places. The handsomely-decorated conference rooms of the EEOB, filled with portraits of grim-faced dead white men, have a stuffier vibe. 

In comparison, the Situation Room is practically modern. Leather high-backed chairs flank the polished table. An enormous monitor usually streams newscasts on mute, next to live-feeds direct from Air Force One and the Press Briefing Room. But it’s currently blank with the Presidential seal floating on screen.

Donghyuck glances up from his laptop. “Late and you didn’t even bring me coffee.”

“Renjun.” Press Secretary Mark Lee lounges next to the head of the table. “How nice of you to join us.” 

He looks clean-cut and boyishly handsome as usual, black hair gelled to Clark Kent-like perfection. On the _Hill_ ’s “Most Beautiful,” Mark almost always ranks top five. 

“Well, to paraphrase Julie Andrews,” Chenle says, striding in half-a-second behind Renjun, “VIPs are never late. Everyone else is simply early. You should all take note.” He nods around the room in greeting. “Friends, colleagues — Donghyuck.”

Donghyuck levels him with a cool, calculating look. “You want me so bad, it makes you look stupid.”

Chenle barks a laugh. “Do you really want to test me? I’ll have you put on a no-fly list. I know a guy.”

“I’m filing a workplace discrimination lawsuit.”

“What’s HR going to do? Fire their boss?” Chenle settles at the head of the table under the monitor, gravitating to the seat of authority in any room he enters. Renjun is surprised to notice the stenographer, Jeno, horn-rimmed glasses and all, not tapping away in the corner but also seated at the table. 

“Who are we waiting on?” Chenle asks.

“The one and only.” Jaemin breezes in and kicks the door closed behind him, his hands full with an iced coffee and a croissant from the Navy Mess. He winks at Renjun as he passes him and plops next to Mark. “What’d I miss?”

Renjun’s heart does an involuntary tap-dance. But it’s only partially caused by Jaemin’s wink and the way his chest fills out his white button-down. 

Because Jaemin never attends meetings if he can help it. He says they make him itchy. He’s usually too busy deep-conditioning his hair or whatever it is he does in his free time. To get Jaemin in the room, this meeting must be dire. 

“We’re only just starting,” Chenle says. “Renjun, why are you still standing? You’re making my stress ulcer act up.” 

Renjun cautiously settles next to Jeno. The cut of his strong profile is a little intimidating. “Have any idea what this is about?” he mutters.

Jeno grunts in what Renjun assumes is a negative. He stifles the urge to roll his eyes. The strong, stoic type never did much for him. 

“Has everyone here been introduced?” Mark asks. “Everyone, this is Jeno, President Bae’s stenographer. He does fantastic work.” 

Renjun notices the avoidance of just “good,” the use of _fantastic_ instead — classic communications strategy to use a strong adjective in place of a generic one. Donghyuck has taught him enough to intuit that the speechmaking has already begun, that Mark is switching to Press Secretary mode. 

And that means he’s trying to sell something.

Except instead of the press, he’s trying to persuade them.

“We’ve met,” Renjun says. “And I’m curious to know what this meeting is about.” 

Chenle steeples his fingers, all business. No need to turn on Chief of Staff mode — he never turns it off. “I assume you all have seen the article about Jaemin.” 

“Which one about me, exactly?” Jaemin asks. “I’m written about a lot.” He takes a long drag of his coffee through the straw that makes an obnoxious sucking sound. 

Chenle rolls his eyes at Renjun in a way that says, _Filet me with a West Wing letter opener._

“About the elementary school incident.” When no one responds, Chenle’s eyebrows shoot up into his bangs. “Not even you, Renjun? I’d assume you have a Google alert for Jaemin’s name at this point.” 

“I do,” Renjun says, more vehemently than the small bribe calls for, and he scales it back. “I do. Obviously. I’d assume you know I’m halfway-competent at my job, Lele.”

“Do you really have a Google alert for my name?” Jaemin asks, deadpan. “Honey, I didn’t know you cared.” 

Mark gently steers the conversation back on course. “It involves the both of you, actually. About the story-time incident.”

Renjun’s breath burns in his throat like the Menthols he quit after sophomore year. Was a nosy reporter in the classroom’s audience? Was there a bug inside the supply closet, recording Renjun and Jaemin’s conversation? Are the Russians colluding with the first graders of New Hope Elementary School?

“Allow me to explain.” Mark clicks a button on a small remote. The monitor screen behind them drops the presidential seal and flashes an article. There’s a blurry photo, captured mid-panic: Renjun pulling Jaemin out of the classroom door, half-stumbling in their haste. The text is small, but Renjun can read the headline crystal-clear.

ON THE (WEST) WINGS OF HEROES?: PRESIDENT’S SON SAVED BY MYSTERY STAFF MEMBER

“Oh,” says Renjun eloquently. “Fuck.”

He sneaks a look across the table at Jaemin. Who is studying the depths of his iced Americano, but the tips of his ears are flaming red. 

“This story broke half-an-hour ago,” says Mark quietly. “Most likely, it was leaked by one of the reporters there, despite Chenle’s best efforts to stifle any press coverage. I imagine it will go viral by mid-morning.”

There’s a beat of quiet as everyone digests. 

“Oh,” says Donghyuck. “ _Fuck_.”

“As you can probably tell, this isn’t the ideal angle we’d want the press to take,” Mark says. “We’d have liked to have gotten ahead of this before it broke. Controlled the narrative.”

Jaemin is steadily chewing through his straw like a peevish rabbit, squinting hard at the screen. “I don’t see how this is so awful, though. If anything, won’t Renjun be seen as a national hero?”

“Sure,” Chenle says. “At the expense of your mother.”

Jeno makes a noise of understanding. “Because he made your Secret Service look incompetent,” he says, speaking for the first time since the meeting began. “That Renjun got to him before even an agent could. It reflects badly on everyone, that the president can’t protect her own son.” He turns to Jaemin when he says, “And now the whole world knows just how vulnerable you are.” 

It’s startling how quickly he sized up the situation. The silence is deafening for a moment as everyone avoids each others’ eyes. It kind of feels like when the regular teacher comes back and yells at the class for how badly they behaved for the substitute. But worse.

“Thanks, Jeno,” Donghyuck says. “Really know how to lighten the mood, buddy.” 

Renjun would have quailed at the look Jeno throws Donghyuck. Jeno seems like a man capable of following through with an argument. But Donghyuck glares right back, defiant at the hint of a challenge. 

“But this is bullshit! I didn’t save Jaemin from anything!” Renjun bursts, unable to temper himself any longer. “It was just a car backfiring. Right?”

“Correct. But half-truth never matters when it comes to the press, does it?” Chenle pulls out his phone when it chirps with an email. “All they need is a click-bait-y title, and the very last line to say that there wasn’t a threat, after all. And boom. Plausible deniability.” 

He says this all while typing out a response and sending it with a _whoosh_ , without once looking away from Renjun. It’s unnerving. 

“So what are we supposed to do?” Renjun says, his voice pitching higher with every word. “I mean, we work for the president, for God’s sake. Can’t we — can’t we sue the news site that leaked this? Threaten them to take it down?”

“I think that would be gross abuse of executive power,” Donghyuck says, but it’s bordering on fretful. “Worth a try, though.”

“Unfortunately, we have what’s called the First Amendment that prevents that kind of thing,” says Chenle. 

“Oh, bite me, Chenle.”

“Take me to dinner first.”

“Okay, then we release a counter-statement instead,” Jaemin offers. “Give me five minutes in the Press Briefing Room, I can bullshit on the stand. We can make something up — say that Renjun is Secret Service, that he’s been my bodyguard this whole time, or something.”

Renjun chokes a little on his own spit. He wheezes, “Oh, come on.” 

“Why not?” Donghyuck asks, wide-eyed and innocent.

“Are you kidding? Because I’m five-eight and I weigh 120 pounds soaking wet. I’m about as close to a Secret Service agent as I am to the fucking moon.”

“I thought you were five-seven.”

“Not helping, Donghyuck,” Renjun moans. 

He slams his face into his hands and watches the bursts of color behind his eyelids. His mind whirs, bouncing from half-baked scheme to the next. When the public gets wind of this story — and they absolutely will, because an attempt on a First Family member’s life, even if a hoax, is enough to feed D.C.’s new cycle for weeks — the country’s eyes will turn to the mystery staff member who saved Jaemin’s life. 

Meaning Renjun will be under the scrutiny of an entire nation. A cold bead of sweat trickles down the back of his neck.

Chenle whispers something to Mark that sparks a furious, hushed argument between them, and Jaemin and Donghyuck are talking on top of one another, throwing ideas back-and-forth at increasing volume. The cacophony of noise makes Renjun’s head ache. There has to be a way out of this, somehow, if he could only just _think_ , but his mind returns again and again to one, devastating truth: _I’m so fucked_.

“I have an idea,” Jeno says, so low Renjun almost misses it. But it cuts through the din and everyone falls silent. 

He blinks in surprise at the sudden hush, pushes his glasses up his nose. 

“What if we lean into it?” He shrugs, what would be a casual movement on another man but is forceful and full of purpose on Jeno. “If the people want a national hero, why not give them one?”

Chenle’s brows shoot up, his typing fingers freezing mid-air, and he looks over at Mark. Who crosses his arms and leans back in his chair with a self-satisfied grin. Like he just won an argument. 

“Well,” Mark says. “Actually.”

Dread wallops Renjun in the gut. “Oh, no,” he says. “Oh, hell no. No fucking way. You can’t be serious.”

“Are you serious, Chenle?” Mark asks.

“Deadly.” _Whoosh_ goes another email.

“Listen,” Renjun says, with a breathy laugh. “Guys. Come on. A lot of the American people are — I mean, some of them are pretty open-minded. And a lot of them straight up don’t care about politics either way. But this is absurd. Who in their right mind is going to believe that _I_ am a national hero?”

“I would,” Jaemin says without hesitation. 

“That’s because you know me,” Renjun says impatiently. “You know I’d—” _Do anything for you_. But that’s not a truth he’s willing to pry from the deepest parts of himself yet. So he clamps his jaw shut instead, hides his face in his hands again.

Because Renjun would. Do anything for him. 

Even if it means being thrust into the limelight, for the whole world to dissect him like a specimen in a petri dish. Instead of being on the safe side of the barrier, he’d be at Jaemin’s side — in Jaemin’s world. The world of flashing lights and microphones and prying eyes. One misstep and it becomes headline news for everyone in America to see.

Renjun would do this. For Jaemin. 

Because isn’t that just poetic irony, a nasty voice reminds him in his head, that despite all his armor of self-protection, that Jaemin is the one person who could slip through the cracks? That even if he ruins himself, it still wouldn’t matter? Because he would do it blindly again and again?

“Hey.” Jaemin’s voice is soft. “You still with us?”

He peels his hands from his eyes to look up at Jaemin, whose eyes are tender — understanding, even. 

“I can’t. I’m not — I’m an immigrant kid from nowhere. I’ve spent half my life with one foot in two different countries. I’m not what America thinks of when they picture a hero.”

“Look at me, Renjun. Neither am I. And I seem to get along okay.” He smiles a little without mirth. “And you are a hero, even if you don’t think you are. You did save me, after all.” 

“Yeah, from a car backfiring.” Renjun studies the grain of the table, feeling itchy and ill-fitting in his own skin from the press of everyone’s eyes. 

“I promise you. No one’s forcing you to do this.” His voice drops even lower. “Especially not me.”

Chenle raises one finger. “I am, actually.”

Jaemin’s voice switches immediately to something brittle, edging on dangerous. “Renjun isn’t doing a goddamn thing he doesn’t want to do.” Renjun’s halfway to a panic attack, but he doesn’t miss the protective note that thrums in Jaemin’s words. “He’s not your henchman, Chenle.”

“Right,” Chenle laughs, bright. And Renjun knows he’s pissed, because he gets that feral customer-service smile and overcompensates with niceness to hide his anger. “Because we all know who he belongs to.”

Donghyuck is watching avidly, eyes darting back and forth between the two of them like he’s at the opening match of Wimbledon.

“Guys, guys,” Mark says, hand hovering above Jaemin’s shoulder like he’s ready to hold him back at any moment. “As I was saying—”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jaemin says, ignoring Mark. Renjun has never heard Jaemin curse like this before. Electricity dances down his spine, and it’s only half-due to the tension sparking in the air.

“I think you know.”

“Go fuck yourself, Chenle,” Jaemin spits.

 _Well_. 

Despite the nerves, despite everything else warring in his brain right now, being on the receiving end of Jaemin’s overprotective side… It’s embarrassing and unprofessional and so out-of-line and — well. Renjun digs his nails into his thighs and hopes wildly that nobody asks him to stand up any time soon.

“Okay!” Mark says loudly, drawing everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand. “Everyone, let’s just — let’s take a breather.”

“And I’d remind everyone in this room,” Chenle says, terrifyingly cheerful, eyes not leaving Jaemin’s, “that Renjun was my friend before he was a thought in any of your heads. Except you, Donghyuck. And I might answer to you, Jaemin, but I’m still the one steering this ship. Excuse my terrible metaphor, but we just veered into fucking Hurricane Katrina. This story — this problem — goes far beyond any of us in this room.”

“Because if we don’t address this soon…” Donghyuck trails off.

“That’s when the public starts _digging_. You know how Americans are with their conspiracy theories. Asking questions about why a civilian saved the First Son and not one of our Secret Service.” Chenle adds grimly, “Who are all getting a very detailed refresher course in bomb threat protocol, by the way.”

“So we’re lying to the American public?” Jeno asks.

“Not lying,” Chenle says. “Renjun saved him, after all. Even if the threat turned out to be fake. And it’s necessary. Because a story like this is exactly the type of mud-raking fodder that the other side needs to sway November’s election.”

“He’s right. We barely cinched the electoral vote last time,” Mark says. “And we lost the House two years ago, to boot. We’re up in points against Bravard, but look at HRC. We had her for four years after Obama, and now Bae. The other side is looking for retaliation and Bravard is out for blood. I’m not taking any chances. Are you, Chenle?”

“Absolutely not,” Chenle says, already fervidly typing out another email. 

“So what you’re saying,” Renjun says quietly, “is that I get no say in the matter.”

“That’s not what we’re saying at all,” Mark says at the exact same time that Chenle says, “Yeah, kinda.” 

Chenle hits send with another _whoosh_. “If you two want to be the reason the president has to get up on the debate stage this fall and explain why she’s endangering her son’s life on a daily basis, then, please. Be my guest.”

Renjun lets out a long sigh, collects his words. “So, what would this entail?” he asks. “If I say yes? Which I’m not, yet.”

“It wouldn’t be for long,” Mark addresses both Renjun and Jaemin. “Only a few months. Your daily responsibilities won’t change. But we need you to make some public appearances — philanthropy events, galas, minor conferences. The kind of thing you already attend together. Pose for the press pool’s cameras. Just enough for us to take back control of the narrative. Satiate the public’s curiosity enough about the First Son’s savior, preferably before this blows out of proportion.”

“Oh, and the President requested a public meeting with you,” Chenle adds, the way someone would mention a Starbucks run with a coworker. “She’s awarding you with a medal of honor. To thank you for saving her son.”

“Jesus Christ,” Renjun says faintly.

“Like I said, it won’t be for long.” Mark gives him an encouraging smile that looks more like a grimace. “And who knows? This might be the perfect opportunity to instate yourself as a public figure. Get people to know your face. At the very least, verify your Instagram account. That could follow you well into a career further down the line.”

Renjun has little interest in being a D-list celebrity, though his resolve is softening despite himself. Yet he’s not entirely convinced. He thinks he has his answer. 

But he looks across the table at Jaemin, who’s been boring holes into him with his eyes. His face is open, though, his anger calmed and his gaze steady. Like he’s accepting of any answer that Renjun is going to give. 

“It’s your call,” he murmurs. 

And Renjun realizes that Jaemin trusts him — that despite their arguments, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Jaemin genuinely trusts his decision, believes that Renjun will make the right call. It’s a weird rush of power, for one of the single most influential men in the world to have such sure conviction in him. A power that makes Renjun feel a little heady with it.

“So?” Chenle asks. 

The weight of everyone’s eyes is so heavy.

Renjun scrubs a hand across his face, weary with the drastically life-changing events that have happened in the past few minutes, but he’s still wired and thinking hard. “All right. All right. I guess I don’t have much of a choice. But I think — I can do this.” He pauses, marshals his thoughts. 

But Donghyuck beats him to it. “Wait. Why am _I_ here?”

Everyone’s heads swivel to stare at him. 

“No, but really. Like, why am I in this? Nothing that’s happened here has anything to do with me.”

“Oh, sorry, Hyuck. I forgot to tell you at the top of the meeting,” Mark says, distracted. “You’re promoted. I want you as Jaemin’s head speechwriter. I would tell you I want you at all the appearances Renjun and Jaemin will be making, but I know you’ll be there anyway.”

Donghyuck cracks a huge, silly grin and leans across the table to thump Jaemin’s arm. It’s enough to make him smile, too. “Hey, look at us, huh? I’ll need to get myself some new business cards. How does ‘Head Speechwriter to the First Son’ sound?”

Jaemin pushes him back into his seat with a laugh, but he sobers when he looks back to Renjun. “Continue.”

“As I was _saying_ , Donghyuck. I’ll do this. On one condition. You owe me that, at least, Mark.” 

“Name it,” says Mark immediately.

“I need Jaemin to have an actualpersonal bodyguard. A real one. I can’t concentrate on charming the public while I’m constantly worrying about Jaemin’s safety.” He resolutely avoids Jaemin’s eyes.

“Funny you should mention it,” Chenle says. “I was just getting to that.” He pulls out his iPad from his shoulder bag. “Jeno, I have your resumé here. You’re former military, is that correct?” Chenle’s tone is so mild, he might have been asking Jeno about the weather. 

Jeno’s spine straightens, and Renjun is reminded of Jaemin in the first-grade classroom when his father was mentioned. “Yes, sir. Four years in the air force.”

“And you enjoyed your time serving your country?” 

“I did, sir. I—” Jeno’s eyes are far away. “I was honorably discharged. I never saw combat, but I’m finding it — challenging, readjusting to civilian life, if I’m being honest. Sir.” 

“What led you to choosing the stenographer job?” 

“I found the ad on Craigslist.” 

It’s so refreshingly honest and unexpected that Renjun barely holds back his laugh.

By some hidden sign, Jeno seems to pass an unspoken test of Chenle’s.

“And how would you feel, Jeno,” Chenle says, and Renjun knows he’s enjoying this, the art of pieces falling perfectly into place, and Chenle their engineer, “if I offered you a promotion as well? It’ll take some training. I won’t lie to you and say it won’t be a grueling process. But I can promise that the pay grade is significantly higher than whatever you’re making now.” 

Jeno clears his throat. “To be honest, sir, I think it would be stupid of me to pass it up.” 

“Well, Jaemin.” Chenle’s smile is cat-like, all canines. “May I introduce you to your new personal bodyguard.”

Renjun wishes he remembered every moment of the last few days. If not to recount them in his best-selling memoir, at least so that he can tell the story to his grandkids about that time their _yéye_ won a Presidential Citizens Medal. 

But honestly, it’s a blur. Like a movie montage of moments, flashing across a screen: 

Calling his mom in Virginia the night after the Situation Room meeting. “My little fox,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “You make your mother proud.” She sniffled. “Now go do a face mask. You need to look handsome for the cameras.”

Running through rehearsal with Jaemin and Donghyuck, to practice for the ceremony. Donghyuck performed a simpering President Bae impersonation that wouldn’t be out-of-place at a drag show. That is, until Renjun chased him onto the South Portico with his shoe in hand, Jaemin on his heels, filming the whole thing on his Snapchat story.

Getting fitted for his suit, a custom-made navy blue one that probably cost more than three months’ of his rent. 

“Your waist is teeny!” the half-deaf Russian tailor shouted as she brought in his blazer.

“Very,” Jaemin said from next to the mirror, eyes raking over him, and Renjun got so nervous he jabbed himself with a sewing pin.

Then it’s the day of, and there’s powder puffed under his eyes to hide dark circles from how little he slept. He’s pawed with gobs of styling pomade and hairspray. There’s last-minute fussing over his bowtie (Donghyuck) and lectures about standing up straight (Chenle — who says, “No, not like that, you look like you have a stomachache,” and Renjun snaps, “Because I do, asshole.”)

Now he’s in the gilded East Room with what feels like hundreds of people, sitting under gold-lacquered chandeliers and sweating through his suit jacket. The enormous portrait of Washington with his arm outstretched gestures towards the stage, as if to say, _After you, kid_. President Bae’s mouth moves but it’s like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking, just garbled noise.

And then the military aide must have called Renjun’s name, because Jaemin is guiding him to the podium, one hand on the small of his back. President Bae hands him the second-highest award a civilian can receive. His palms are so sweaty he nearly drops it. The biggest crowd he’s ever been in front of was at his piano recital in third grade. And right now his face is being broadcasted on every major news outlet in the United States.

There’s this weird thing that happens when you’re up close with the most famous person in the world. Your brain can’t rationalize that this face is the one you’ve seen every day on television for the past four years. Even if she’s your boss’s boss, the cognitive dissonance is still there. So your brain hyper-focuses on tiny details to be able to process the whole thing. 

President Joohyun Bae has a mole on her cheek, so small it’s almost entirely hidden by makeup. But it’s there. It’s all Renjun can see looking up at her as she smiles and shakes his hand. 

Then he remembers Jaemin’s chest mole that he saw in that hotel room in France, and his brain blows a fuse and dies completely.

Renjun knows there were photos because he saw them afterward, him pale and grimacing as if in pain, with President Bae’s arm around his shoulders. But he blacked out at some point between his chair and the podium and doesn’t remember a damn thing. 

He comes back to himself to the snapping of shutters, bursts of light, and the audience’s applause loud as cannon bursts. 

Jaemin reaches out and takes his hand. 

And that’s the photo Renjun finds hung outside the Blue Room the next Monday. Photos of the First Family are framed all over the walls of the White House, snapped by the press pool and switched out weekly. He almost trips on the carpet when he sees it: captured mid-handshake, Renjun in front of Jaemin, who’s beaming down at him with a huge, movie-star smile. 

“Aw, look at you two,” one of the economic advisors chirps as she passes by. “You look like best buds!”

Renjun laughs so hard he knocks over a Truman era coffee urn.

“Are you staying for the Fourth of July bash tomorrow?” Donghyuck asks. They’re waiting in the never-ending lunch line outside the Navy Mess, blazers thrown over their shoulders and shirt-sleeves pushed up their forearms.

Renjun wrinkles his nose. “I’d rather not celebrate a genocidal capitalist empire.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “There’s an open bar this year.”

“All right, you’ve convinced me.”

When Renjun was eight, he and his family moved from their two-bedroom in Jilin to a ranch-style in the Richmond suburbs. He spoke only a few words of English, and all he knew about the culture of his new home country was Spider-man and Britney Spears. 

Nothing is a better crash-course to American heritage than Fourth of July at the White House.

Every year, President Bae hosts military families to play badminton and cornhole on the South Lawn. Under massive white tents, local restaurants serve heaping platters of barbecue and enough carbs to pad out Renjun’s waistline for a decade. There are a few touches of the Bae family’s culture, too — samgyeopsal on the grill next to the burgers, and bowls of kimchi and white rice alongside potato salad. 

Mrs. President floats through it all, greeting civilians and Congressmen with equal deference and kissing every baby passed her way. 

Renjun tails Jaemin like his very sweaty shadow, as Jaemin shakes hands with veterans and does plenty of baby-kissing of his own. He’s every inch the gorgeous, all-American First Son, from his baby-blue button-down to his cuffed chinos. 

He looks like a fucking J. Crew model. It physically hurts Renjun to stare at him straight-on.

To Renjun’s utter bewilderment, several families they meet actually recognize him from the news story. Apparently, it did go viral on Twitter, just as Mark predicted. Renjun wouldn’t know, as his fingers have been avoiding tapping on any social media apps out of unbridled fear. He has no idea what the American people are saying about him. He’d like to keep it that way. 

But one hunched Navy veteran with a walker asks for a photo with the two of them, and who is Renjun to say no to a realAmerican hero?

It makes him antsy, though, constantly checking over his shoulder, with Jaemin out in the open like this. Even though they’re both being tailed by five plainclothes Secret Service. 

Jeno hasn’t been instated as Jaemin’s personal bodyguard yet. He’s at an “undisclosed location” in New Mexico, according to Chenle, in the midst of an accelerated training program. Renjun wonders idly if he’s at Area 51. He has no reference for what Secret Service training might look like. He hopes, for Jeno’s sake, that it has the same amount of gun-twirling and homoerotic subtext as _Cadet Kelly_.

Renjun isn’t on the clock, technically. Fourth of July is a federal holiday, after all. But it would feel strange being on White House grounds and not sticking by Jaemin’s side. And if Renjun is honest with himself, he doesn’t mind watching Jaemin like this. 

Just like his mom, he moves seamlessly among the social stratum of both politicians and regular Americans, all here for fireworks and corn-on-the-cob. He morphs from dignified and presidential to boy-next-door and back again without an ounce of discomfort. 

In short, it’s watching a virtuoso at work. Maddeningly so. Jaemin doesn’t even try and everyone he meets stumbles over themselves to prove their worthiness, like penitent subjects. As if Jaemin gives a fuck. Renjun wants to shove his face in a topiary.

Thankfully, President Bae deprives him of the chance. She pulls Jaemin and Yeri, who’s visiting from Stanford, onto the Blue Room Balcony. They raise glasses of champagne and toast to the birth of independence. Her eyes sparkle as she toasts her kids, too, then pulls them into a bear hug.

For some reason, Jaemin excuses himself before the fireworks even start and disappears. He’s probably late for his eyebrow wax or something. Renjun doesn’t have the time to worry about him, though. Donghyuck tugs him to the side with a wicked grin and a handle of rum he swiped from the bar. The evening melts into something flushed and blurry, fast. 

For Pride Month, the White House was lit up every night in rainbow. But tonight, it glows red, white, and blue. The crowd flocks to the main stage for the annual concert, and Renjun loses his tie and spills his red Solo cup across Donghyuck’s chest. The fireworks _boom-_ crackle in the night sky. 

He throws back his head and does what he rarely allows himself to do: he takes a breath.

America isn’t anything like Renjun imagined it would be, as a young immigrant kid with nothing but an accent and a suitcase full of Moomin plushies. He has always felt a bit like a boy from nowhere, like Peter Pan and his troupe. 

Mourning a person is one thing. But mourning a country left behind that has faded in his memories into tones of sepia, like an old photograph, is a strange form of grief. Rather than a pain focused to one, fixed point, the blow to his gut when he found out his grandmother passed in her sleep, it’s an ambient, low-level hum. How do you deal with an emptiness of not belonging that spans an ocean?

But despite it all, Renjun has tonight. He has a place at the White House to call his own, however insignificant. He has both of his parents, a privilege he does not take for granted. He has a home, however temporal, to sleep at night. He has top-shelf rum. He has the reflection of fireworks in Donghyuck’s glasses, Renjun’s heart throbbing in tandem with each dazzling explosion. 

Tonight, he’s alive.

Tonight, moving across the world may have been worth it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ʕ♡˙ᴥ˙♡ʔ  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/haedeluna)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/haedeluna)


	4. the gang goes on a field trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Renjun Huang,” Jaemin chides, as he turns to look out the window again, “sometimes I think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
> 
> It’s not meant as a compliment, Renjun doesn’t think. But he’s smiling when he says, “I get that a lot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow. what a wild ride these past few weeks have been. what a fucking YEAR.
> 
> it feels tone-deaf given the content of this fic not to mention the u.s. election. it’s been a massive relief, to say the least. even though i wish president bae was the victor, i think i can settle for these results. :)
> 
> not to be overly earnest here, but i wanna say thanks to all of you for reading this fic, even when american politics seemed like an unrelenting nightmare with no end in sight. i know this is kpop fanfic and Not That Deep. i know that. but wwi has been a cathartic release for me when shit was shitty. as someone who’s relatively new to ficdom, i’m truly overjoyed that anyone has read it at all. 
> 
> the fight isn’t over, but i feel a hell of a lot lighter moving forward. i hope y’all enjoy this chapter and stay safe, sane, and healthy. 
> 
> tw in this chapter for mentions of past parental death

Work at the White House stops for no man, and July marches on, relentless. Clark Bravard is getting high-and-mighty about Second Amendment rights. One of the speechwriters fumbles a talking point and makes President Bae sound like she threw shade at the entire nation of Kenya. Jaemin trends on every major social media platform for wearing a pink suit to a stump speech, to the derision of Fox News. 

“I mean, his lack of respect for traditional family values concerns me,” the WASP-y blonde commentator says on one of the flat-screens in Upper Press. Donghyuck throws a wadded-up memo that bounces off her face. “How can we trust the Bae administration to—”

“What a waste of perfectly good hair bleach,” Renjun says.

Next to him, Jaemin raises his eyebrows. “Hoes mad,” he says, ever-dignified, and turns on his heel to leave the room. Renjun ruins his tie when he drops his coffee cup laughing.

Donghyuck manages to drag Renjun to Uno Más for half-price margs, at long last. Three different men hit on Donghyuck while Renjun lingers on a sticky barstool behind him, margarita sweating in his hand, trying not to show he’s bothered by it. 

It’s a typical work week.

Above it all, debt ceiling negotiations remain at an excruciating standstill. Frankly, Renjun doesn’t know what to do with himself. Having almost no tasks to complete gives him an eye-twitch. 

So he resolves to clean out his office for the first time in two years. He dumps vintage relics, whose history has long been forgotten, into dusty piles for Goodwill. The trash bag, stuffed with crumpled coffee straw wrappers and old, dog-eared gas station receipts, goes to the janitor.

He emerges from a cardboard box of 1982 employee tax returns, coughing from the dust, to see Jaemin standing in his office doorway. He’s blazer-less, his shirt untucked, which Renjun sadly knows enough about his work habits to mean he’s done for the day. 

“What are you up to?”

“What does it look like?” Renjun grouses, brushing a dust bunny off his pant leg. “I’m tired of staring at Reagan-era fossils all day. It’s bad enough he gave us trickle-down economics. Now I have to deal with his yard sale trash.”

Jaemin just stares. And Renjun realizes all at once that he’s sweaty and vaguely gross and in desperate need of a shower, and Jaemin is looking at him in a way that makes him very, very conscious of that. 

Renjun doesn’t know what the fuck possesses him, but he says, “Unless you see something you like, get out of my office.”

Jaemin barely conceals a grin. He leans against his door-frame and crosses his arms. “Am I not allowed to look at you?”

Renjun gives him a deeply unpresidential finger. Jaemin cackles. 

“Either help me clean this shit up, or go give someone else a migraine. I’m sure Donghyuck is lurking somewhere.” 

Renjun turns back to the box. And a very confused pig somewhere must have just sprouted wings, because Jaemin actually strides in and kneels to rifle through some manila folders. 

“I was just—” Renjun starts. Jaemin looks at him with raised brows, straightens, and rolls up his shirt sleeves. Renjun stumbles over his words and finally says, “Like, you don’t have to. I just meant. Uh.” 

What is it about Jaemin’s forearms that’s making Renjun feel like a Victorian man glimpsing a noblewoman’s ankles? Have his hands always been that — large? It’s been a long day.

“You probably need someone to carry all these out, right?” Jaemin gestures at the heap of memorabilia Renjun has amassed in the corner.

“I can manage on my own.”

“It’s okay to ask for help sometimes.”

“I mean, I’m not a child, I’m fully able to—”

His train of thought is abandoning him at the station, because Jaemin walks up to him, nudges him aside, and heaves the entire cardboard box Renjun was leaning against, up onto his shoulder like it weighs nothing. 

“You were saying?” Jaemin says, bemused. 

Renjun swallows, just staring at him, looks at the box on his shoulder, then back at him. “Just — I’m — fucking — go put it in the hallway and stay out of my hair, you smug little shit.”

Jaemin actually bows slightly, careful not to spill the box he’s holding. “Your wish is my command.”

When Jaemin turns, Renjun follows an impulse and crumples a receipt, then lobs it at his retreating head as hard as he can. His aim is shit but he hits him square in the back. And Jaemin’s laugh, loud and unbounded, follows him out the door. 

So all in all, a typical, irritating work week. 

Until today, when Renjun rolls into the West Wing with a pounding, tequila-sugar hangover, and he’s wishing he could go back to Nancy Reagan’s vintage cutlery. 

As usual, it’s all Mark Lee’s fault. 

He corners Renjun after the daily press briefing with a manic glint in his eye, the one that Renjun has come to associate with certain doom. Even after the glow from the Post-it note Renjun found on his desk that morning — _We have a campaign stop in North Carolina next weekend. Maybe we’ll find where those Roanoke fellows ran off to. Hope they have beer_ , with another bunny signature— his heart still drops into his stomach.

“I have your first assignment. Jeno is back from New Mexico and is finishing up his training at the RTC.”

“The who?”

“The Rowley Training Center for the Secret Service, Renjun, keep up. Chenle wants you and Jaemin seen with Jeno. Before your first appearance at Jaemin’s birthday, that is.”

Jaemin’s charity bash. Of course. It’s rapidly approaching, only weeks away. Jaemin throws one every year, benefiting a different cancer nonprofit each time, the perfect First Family propaganda disguised as a lavish gala at the White House. 

Renjun always attends. He and Donghyuck get rip-roaring drunk and get paid overtime hours to do so. It’s reason enough for Renjun to rent a tux and actually brush his hair for once. 

But the charity part is real, and it raises enough money that even Chenle doesn’t turn up his nose at it. And Renjun knows Jaemin genuinely cares, good press aside. It’s only one of his many philanthropy endeavors. He’s even a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. 

Renjun pointedly does not think about it.

“We’re sending you two out with a few press poolers to document it,” Mark says, snapping Renjun back to the here and now. “And Donghyuck, too. He’s coming. Sorry.”

“ _Must_ he?”

“He wasn’t going to, originally.” Mark tugs at his collar. “But he got wind of the plan and, uh. He can be very persuasive.”

“Gross. I don’t want to know.” 

“Just — smile, okay? Make it convincing. Chenle told me to say to ‘make it look like you think the sun shines out of Jaemin’s asshole.’” At Renjun’s splutter, Mark plows on. “And get Jaemin to pose as much as he can with Jeno, and the other recruits, too. So we can remind everyone who’s protecting the president’s son. With the national hero at his side, no less.” 

Mark punches his arm like they’re in the locker room and he just made a raunchy joke. Renjun wants to throw up.

“Right. Getting ahead of the narrative.”

“Don’t sound too thrilled about it.” Mark sweeps out of the room, his perfectly-gelled hair not wobbling an inch, and calls over his shoulder, “And don’t wear nice shoes!”

The RTC is five-hundred sweeping green acres of compound, nestled in the pine groves of Maryland and designed for immaculate efficiency, not a single cinder block gone to waste. It’s somewhere between a military academy and a hyper-intense summer camp, if the trainees marching across the quad carrying flags are any indication. The deputy chief who greets them is about eight feet tall and looks capable of killing a man with one swing of his fist. 

It’s nothing like _Cadet Kelly_ , to Renjun’s disappointment. He does see a few trainees twirling rifles, though. 

And that’s enough of a win to give him a spring in his step, as the deputy chief moves them through a breakneck tour of the facility. Renjun is glad he took Mark’s advice and wore his Converse. The press pool surreptitiously snaps photos from a few feet behind. One of the photographers almost drops his camera in excitement when Jaemin pulls a Captain Morgan on a nearby rock. 

Speaking of, the First Son is sweating a little under his Dior jacket in the sun. “How’s Jeno doing, sir?”

The deputy chief laughs, deep and hearty. “Private Lee? Well, son, to give you some perspective, our recruits usually spend three months at our training center in New Mexico before they even think about being transferred here. One in one hundred trainees make it through our vetting process. As you know, Private Lee was already on a fast-track to complete it in a month.” 

The deputy chief stops and turns to the group, halting them. “He did it in two weeks.”

Renjun whistles under his breath. “Damn. As if Jeno needs to get any scarier.”

Huffing and pulling up the rear, Donghyuck eyes a group of male recruits passing by, the sunlight glistening on the hard lines of their biceps and shoulders. “Scary isn’t the word I’d use.”

“Sir, is there a water fountain nearby?” Jaemin asks. “I think Private Donghyuck here is thirsty.”

When the press pool isn’t looking, Donghyuck cuffs the back of Jaemin’s head to his squawk.

Jeno does, in fact, cut an even more impressive profile than usual when they meet him in the gymnasium, in a group with a few other recruits. He’s in uniform, fitted white polo across his broad chest, and black cargo pants. He even has a gun holstered to his side. 

Renjun almost makes a G.I. Jeno joke. But the look on Donghyuck’s face is priceless enough.

Jaemin strides over to shake Jeno’s hand and exchange a few pleasantries. The press pool’s cameras shutter wildly. Donghyuck and Renjun follow the other trainees to gather in front of the deputy chief.

“I’m doomed,” Donghyuck moans, frantically pulling on Renjun’s arm and rocking on his heels. “I’m absolutely done for. Give my mom all my speech notebooks. Don’t let her find the tentaporn stash.”

“I’ll send my condolences,” Renjun says, thoroughly entertained.

“I’m not joking.” Donghyuck casts a look over to Jeno, strong-jawed and stoic as he chats casually with Jaemin for the cameras, and whines pathetically. “He’s so hot I’m gonna die.”

Renjun rests a brotherly hand on his shoulder. He says, heartfelt, “Then die.”

“All right, men!” The deputy chief claps his massive hands. The sound is loud as a gunshot. “And Private Kingsley,” he adds sheepishly when the lone female recruit in the class cuts her eyes at him. Jeno and Jaemin join the others in the audience. 

“Today, we’re gonna give the First Son and his staff a demonstration. We’d like to teach you all a few basic self-defense techniques.”

“This will be fun,” Jaemin says, something unhinged behind his eyes. 

Donghyuck side-eyes him warily over Renjun’s head. “Your lust for violence concerns me.”

“Might come in handy with the situations you fellas find yourselves in,” the deputy chief continues. He motions for Jeno to come forward. “Private Lee, would you like to show the boss what you’ve learned?” 

“I’m hardly his boss,” Jaemin says, with a Cheshire cat grin, throwing an arm around Jeno like they’re fraternity brothers or something.

“No, you’re not,” Jeno agrees. He steps out from under Jaemin’s arm and says over his shoulder, “Your mom is.” 

Jaemin opens his mouth, then closes it, looking a bit like a goldfish out of water. The image is so deeply satisfying, Renjun could kiss Jeno for creating it, if it wouldn’t send Donghyuck into an existential crisis. Jeno does look sexy in combat boots, though. Maybe in another life, Renjun would saunter over to Jeno and ask if he could play with his gun.

“Any volunteers for Jeno’s demo partner?” the deputy chief booms. 

Renjun pushes Donghyuck forward so fast, he stumbles. “Right here, sir.”

Donghyuck mouths, “You’re dead,” with wide eyes behind the deputy chief’s back, as he leads him and Jeno into position at the front of the room.

Renjun startles a little when Jaemin’s lips brush his ear. “Ten bucks says Donghyuck moans when Jeno throws him into the wall.”

Renjun covers his mouth with his hand to hide his smile. “I bet it happens as soon as Jeno gets him in a chokehold.”

Jaemin’s laugh against his ear is dark. It drips down Renjun’s spine. “Make it twenty, and you’re on.”

“Deal. I hope your presidential bank account can take the hit.” 

Then Renjun notices one of the press poolers eyeing them and raising her camera. 

“Act like you like me,” Renjun whispers. “The vultures are looking our way.”

Jaemin frowns, then realizes the photographers will catch it, and smoothes his face into haughty neutrality. He says without looking at him, “What do you mean, ‘act’?”

The press poolers capture it all, Renjun and Jaemin overlooking, while Jeno demonstrates on Donghyuck how to escape common attacker’s holds: everything from locking Donghyuck’s arms behind his back to pressing him against the wall, as the deputy chief directs them into each move. 

“And this,” Jeno says, bending Donghyuck over with his hands pinned behind his back, “frees me and completely immobilizes my opponent. Try to escape me. Go ahead.”

“Uh.” Donghyuck makes a valiant attempt at a wriggle. 

“Can you move at all, Donghyuck?” Renjun has the sense that Jeno might be enjoying this.

“Nope,” Donghyuck rasps. His cheeks are very pink. “Not an inch.”

Donghyuck, sadly, does not lose himself at any point, but his cheeks get closer to the color of a ripe tomato with every move Jeno guides him through. He finally lets out a squeak when Jeno lifts him off the ground in an elbow chokehold from behind. Renjun turns away and bites down on his fist to not break character.

Jeno immediately sets Donghyuck back down on his feet. “Too much?”

“I think I’ve learned enough for a lifetime, thanks,” Donghyuck says, his voice higher than normal, hurriedly tucking his shirt back into his dress pants. He scurries back to his spot in the audience next to Renjun. 

“I hope you bastards are happy,” Donghyuck hisses at them. But Jaemin and Renjun are already in a fit of silent hysterics.

Jaemin wipes tears from his eyes. “Good God. I think I just gave myself a hernia.”

“I win,” Renjun gloats. “You owe me twenty dollars.”

“That hardly constituted a moan.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Donghyuck asks, grumpiness fizzling into curiosity. He kind of reminds Renjun of a beagle: never stuck on one topic for long, always willing to give chase, and entirely too smart for his own good.

Jaemin ignores Donghyuck. “Well, you saved my life, too. I guess I owe you two favors, now. How should I repay you?”

Renjun feels an inexplicable rush of heat down the back of his neck, and he has a hard time keeping eye contact. 

Donghyuck’s head bobs between the two of them like he’s watching a sparring match. “Were you two betting on me?”

“None of your business,” Renjun rushes. “And tuck your Jeno-boner under your waistband, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I do _not_ have—” He ducks behind Renjun. There’s the sound of frantic rustling fabric, then he pops back in front of them both. “I just think you two are awfully cozy lately. Should I start pricing floral arrangements?” 

Renjun doesn’t dare look at Jaemin next to him. “The only pricing you should be doing is for your funer—”

“Nicely done, team,” the deputy chief booms, redirecting their attention to the lesson. “Donghyuck, you can take a breather. Good work today.”

When the chief turns away, Donghyuck sticks his tongue out at Renjun. He dodges Renjun’s fist and dances over to the wall, to sag gratefully against it.

“Now!” The deputy chief claps his hands together once more, almost gleeful. “If everyone could break into groups of two. Recruits, this will all be old hat, but it’s good to have a refresher. We’d like to guide you all through some basic mounted positions.”

All the blood drains from Renjun’s face. _Mounted_?

Then the recruits around them are pairing up with one another. All at once, Renjun is in the third grade again, knock-kneed, being picked last for dodgeball teams because he’s the foreign kid with broken English. The rubber-mat walls of the gymnasium start to close in. 

Someone nudges his side. 

“Looks like it’s just you and me,” Jaemin says with a glance around the room. 

The trainees are all paired up and are dropping to the floor, rolling onto their backs. Then their partners swing their legs over so that — oh, that’s what mounted means, oh, God — so that they’re sitting on topof each other. Like fully, unashamed, gym-floor cowgirl position. 

Renjun considers what it might feel like to have Jaemin on top of him, and his body’s reaction is somewhere between jumping headfirst into a volcano and being sizzled by an electric chair on high. “Um.”

“Oh, come on.” Jaemin drops to his knees in front of him. And that is _not_ an image that Renjun needs permanently seared into his brain-folds. But it’s there now. “You know what Mark said. Make it convincing. And Chenle will have an embolism if we don’t get some good photos.”

As if in agreement, the press pool’s cameras shutter like so many cicadas’ wings.

Not for the first time in his life, it’s the fear of Chenle’s wrath that makes Renjun’s decision for him. 

“Fine,” Renjun says, a bit strangled. “But I call dibs on top bunk.”

Jaemin shrugs, feigning nonchalance. But his eyes glitter up at Renjun as he shrugs off his suit jacket and stretches out on his back. He looks like he’s posing for a _Men’s Health_ shoot. As if to complete the image, the final nail in the coffin, he loosens his tie and pops his top button, and Renjun’s vision tinges red for a second. “I hardly see how that makes a difference.”

And that’s how Renjun ends up straddling Jaemin’s hips, hovering over him, his thigh muscles fluttering with the effort to keep from brushing against Jaemin anywhere dangerous.

This is not, Renjun thinks half-hysterically, how he expected his work day to go. Certainly not straddling the president’s son on a slightly-sticky gym floor, at a school for national bodyguards. But Jaemin’s right. It doesn’t make much of a difference. He’s still sweating in twelve different places under his suit and his heart is performing a free-form drum solo and he has absolutely _no_ idea where to put his hands.

“This is obscene.”

“Relax. You’re not going to get hurt. Here.” Jaemin bends at the knees to prop up his legs, bracing Renjun from behind. It doesn’t help. It actually sinks Renjun deeper into the mount. Terror claws up Renjun’s throat.

“I’m not worried about getting hurt, I—” He heaves a deep breath, and settles his hands in the least risqué placement he can think of, Superman-style on his hips. “This isn’t — befitting of your station.”

Jaemin quirks a perfect brow. His hair is splayed out in tendrils around his head. “What am I, the Queen of England?”

“You’re one of those things. With ‘drama’ before it.”

“Right,” Jaemin scoffs. He grips Renjun lightly on his thighs. “Because I’m the one having a meltdown over being in my lap right now.”

“I am not ‘having a meltdown—’”

“Everyone, now that we’re in position,” the deputy chief announces from the front of the room, “let’s go over the fundamentals. It only takes how long for an attacker to choke someone unconscious?”

“Six seconds, sir,” Jeno says mildly.

“Correct. That’s why when an attacker gets you in a chokehold, you only have a limited amount of time to escape.” He gestures to Jaemin and Renjun. “Would our special guests today like to demonstrate?” 

All of the recruits’ heads swivel towards them, like a flock of seagulls that just spotted a breadcrumb. 

“Please, no,” Renjun moans under his breath.

“Now, Renjun, what I want you to do is put Jaemin in a chokehold,” the deputy chief says, all business. The rubber mat floor makes a slight sticking sound as he approaches them.

When Renjun hesitates, the deputy chief says, “Out of all the places you could hurt a First Family member, this room is the least likely, right?”

“Point taken.” And wringing Jaemin’s neck sounds satisfying right about now. He pauses for a moment to remind his heart how to beat again, then walks forward on his knees to lean forward and wrap both hands around Jaemin’s throat. And Jaemin’s eyes spark with something Renjun is afraid to name.

“When I said ‘make it convincing’,” Jaemin says, a little hoarse from the pressure on his windpipe, “this isn’t what I had in mind.”

Renjun thinks he hears Donghyuck snicker from across the room. But he can’t be sure. 

“Now, Mr. Na, how would you go about breaking an attacker’s grip if he had you in this state?” the deputy chief asks, dutifully ignoring their barbs. 

“Hit him as hard as I could between the legs,” Jaemin says immediately.

“Very good, Mr. Na,” the deputy chief chuckles. “But that might be easier said than done when Renjun here is crushing your windpipe. Hitting an attacker in the babymaker might work, or it might not elicit a strong enough response. Adrenaline can dull even the sharpest of pain. And now you’ve just pissed him off.” 

“Or your attacker could be a woman,” Private Kingsley adds. 

“Very true.” The deputy chief kneels and taps the mat next to Jaemin’s head. “And you’re in trouble if they decide to punch you into the pavement.” He straightens. “So let’s assume that doesn’t work. What do you do next?” 

In lieu of a response, Jaemin digs his fingers into the meat of Renjun’s right bicep and grips his wrist with his other hand. Renjun is helpless to break free. Then he hooks his left foot around Renjun’s right ankle, thrusts his hips up, and before Renjun can breathe, rolls over on top of him and pins him down in the space of an instant. 

Renjun’s back hits the ground, and all the air is knocked out of his lungs. It doesn’t hurt. But the force has him almost bounce off the rubber floor. 

“Oh,” Renjun gasps. The camera shutters go insane. 

“You okay?” Jaemin asks softly, at odds with the way he just slammed Renjun with what felt like years of pent-up frustration.

“That was, um.” The room is spinning around Renjun, but it’s not from vertigo. 

He has a running list in his mind, a tally of Things He Didn’t Previously Find Erotic: forearms under rolled-up sleeves, French four-posters, the smell of a freshly-roasted Americano, Post-it notes. He mentally adds “being man-handled” to the top, number one, in fat, red letters.

The deputy chief brays a laugh. “Perfect execution! I see we don’t have much to teach you, Mr. Na. You two, feel free to switch positions.” He jumps up and jogs back to the front of the room. “Recruits, let’s go over what he just did step-by-step.”

As the trainees practice, Jaemin releases Renjun and smoothes the wrinkles out of the front of Renjun’s shirt. Renjun jerks and bats his hands away. “I’m fine,” he says, breathless.

“You sure about that?” Jaemin’s mouth is set in a way that’s too smugly knowing for comfort. “You don’t seem very fine.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There’s a vein standing out in Jaemin’s neck from the exertion of holding himself up over him. Renjun wonders what it would feel like under his mouth, and a shiver ripples through him in tandem with the thought. The press of Jaemin’s body on top of his is — well, it’s entirely too much for Renjun to handle right now. 

Before his own body betrays him, he shoves Jaemin off by the shoulders and sits up, straightening his shirt and tie. Desperate to change the subject, Renjun pauses to catch his breath. “Where’d you learn that, anyway?”

“My dad enrolled me in jiu jitsu as soon as I learned how to walk,” Jaemin says with a shrug, like that’s a normal human thing. “I learned well, I guess.”

“Did your jiu jitsu classes include manners? You could have warned me you were about to body-slam me.”

Jaemin’s smile gleams a little bit feral. He sinks back on his heels. “I could have. But I think you were kind of into it.”

Renjun opens and closes his mouth several times, trying to form words, and finally bursts, “You were — I was not — fuck off! Don’t talk to me. I’m going to sit with Donghyuck.”

Renjun rises, but before he can dramatically storm off the way he intended, Jaemin grabs his hand and tugs him to a halt. “You heard what the chief said.” His voice is velvety, like he’s coaxing an unruly pet. It only makes Renjun fume harder. “It’s my turn.”

“Absolutely not.” 

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” 

Renjun looks between Jaemin, kneeling in front of him, and the recruits around them, sneaking curious glances at the First Son as they pretend to listen to the deputy chief’s directions, and finally, to the press pool in the corner, drifting closer with their cameras and boom mics. So many sets of prying eyes. There’s never a moment when they aren’t watched. 

But Renjun, for whatever godforsaken reason, still lets Jaemin drag him back to the floor and onto his back. He’s always had a hard time saying no to Jaemin. Maybe it’s hard-wired from years of being his assistant, where his main job duty is to say yes to his every request. 

Maybe he just likes that Jaemin teases him with the illusion of a choice, when they both know damn well Renjun is going to say yes anyway. Yeah, Renjun thinks, turning that over in his mind the way a cat arches languorously into being pet. He likes that.

Whichever way, he has Dumbass Fool for Jaemin syndrome, and his case is terminal. Bad decisions: Jaemin wheedles them out of him and then swoops in for the kill.

Jaemin places one hand on his right knee, firm but gentle. “I’m going to get on top of you now,” he says, too breezily. “May I?”

Renjun takes in Jaemin, kneeling and leaning over him, coyness playing around the corners of his mouth. Jaemin and his large hands and his broad shoulders and his clever curl of his lips and his hips when he pressed up into Renjun to roll on top of him. It’s... a lot. 

But he’s asking for permission. That implies he’s giving Renjun a choice. 

“I need,” Renjun starts and his voice gives up on him. He swallows thickly. “I need you to know that I absolutely cannot do that.”

Jaemin raises an eyebrow again. “Then what are you on your back for?”

Renjun crosses his arms, like it’ll help shield himself. Frankly, he’s sick and tired of volleying back Jaemin’s taunts without serving some of his own. It’s time to play offense. “Do you always ask this many questions when you have a man on his back?” 

It’s enough to tug Jaemin’s small grin into a full one. Shark-like. “Stop being a brat.” His tone does not, in fact, imply that he wants Renjun to stop. 

_Oh, no._ It’s like Jaemin plunges his hand into his rib cage and draws out the exact thing that sets Renjun on fire, and then does it again. Repeatedly. Renjun can feel his own heartbeat in his hands, in the tips of his fingers. 

He stares resolutely at the ceiling. Backpedal, retreat. He switches back to defense like the coward he is. “I’m not a brat. I happen to be very nice to people who aren’t you.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it, sweetheart.”

Jaemin moves forward, but Renjun stops him with his palm on his shoulder.

“What if I hurt you?” Renjun asks, verging on pleading now. It disgusts him but he’s out of options. “Did you ever consider that?” 

Jaemin rolls his eyes as he swings a leg over Renjun to straddle his hips. It’s a _lot_ , so fucking much. Jaemin’s skin, even through his clothes, is so warm. Renjun has made the bad decision, and now Jaemin is swooping in. “As if you could hurt me.”

And the heat roiling in Renjun’s belly stutters for a second. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Renjun narrows his eyes. “Enlighten me.” 

“Renjun. Darling,” Jaemin drawls. Renjun doesn’t have the time to latch onto the pet name before Jaemin’s next words. “You are mighty. But large in stature, you are not.”

Renjun gapes up at him for a second, stunned into silence. Then he smacks Jaemin in the chest, open-palmed. Jaemin yelps. “O-ii!”

“You can’t just go around calling people scrawny just because you’re—” Renjun gestures at all of Jaemin helplessly, then spits, “You!”

“Because I’m what, exactly? Enlighten me,” Jaemin says, referencing Renjun earlier. “I’ve heard it all from you. Privileged? Arrogant? Go on. Is there anything I’m missing?”

“I despise you.” 

“No, I don’t think you do, though,” he says with a smug, infinitely punchable smile. “And I’d like to add, at no point did I call you ‘scrawny.’ I would say ‘directionally challenged.’ It’s more P.C.” 

Renjun bristles even more. “Are you calling me _short_?” he says through gritted teeth.

Jaemin snorts and pretends to think. “I seem to recall a certain someone calling _himself_ — what was it? Five-six and 120 pounds soaking wet?”

And even amongst all the taunts, the teases, the poking and prodding to get Renjun to break, this is where it ends. This is where he draws the line. The challenge is clear in Jaemin’s eyes. _Just how far can I push you?_ But the thing about Renjun is that he’s never faced a challenge he didn’t want to carefully and systematically dissect, then proceed to destroy. 

_Mighty?_ Yeah. He can be mighty. He can be a real fucking nightmare. 

Renjun latches onto Jaemin’s arm, hooks his foot around his ankle, and cants his hips up into Jaemin. Jaemin makes a noise in his ear that sounds like surprise but darker. But Renjun isn’t listening. He’s too busy surging forward, flipping Jaemin over, and slamming him into the ground. 

He catches himself from falling forward with a hand next to Jaemin’s head, caging him in. Jaemin’s eyes dart to his mouth for a heartbeat, then back to his eyes. 

“I’m five-seven,” Renjun hisses, looming over him. “And _you_ still owe me twenty dollars.” 

_Match point_.

The deputy chief’s voice sounds like it’s miles away. “Nice work, Renjun! You’re a fast learner.”

“Yes,” Jaemin says, too quiet for the deputy to hear. His eyes are smoldering. “He is.”

Renjun shoves Jaemin against the rubber mat floor again, using the momentum to heave himself to his feet. His ears are ringing with adrenaline and residual anger and something white-hot and agitated under his sternum, something that’s been set loose from its bonds. It tastes a little bit like blood in his mouth and a little bit like victory.

“I agree with Donghyuck,” Renjun says. He brushes off his suit. “I’ve learned enough for a lifetime.”

He turns and stalks away to where Donghyuck is leaning against the wall, leaving Jaemin flat on his back on the floor, his jaw still hanging agape.

The car ride back to the White House is tense, to say the least. 

It’s late evening by the time their visit to the RTC is finished. They got enough photos to wallpaper the Roosevelt Room twice over. Renjun bribes one from a press pool photographer and texts it to Chenle, a shot of him and Jaemin watching Donghyuck being pretzeled by Jeno, with huge, shit-eating grins on their faces.

Chenle responds immediately. _Aww, look_ , his text reads. _It’s almost like you two don’t want to strangle each other._

He thinks about Jaemin’s eyes when Renjun wrapped his fingers around his throat, the way they darted to his mouth, and heat stings his face. Chenle doesn’t know how close he is to the mark. 

Jeno isn’t with them, but is staying behind to complete his training. He’ll be ready in time to be appointed for Jaemin’s birthday. Renjun doubts it will take even that long. He half-expects Jeno to roll up to the White House tomorrow morning, with a duffel bag and a gold medal for perfect headlocks or something. 

In one of the massive, armored SUVs that First Family members travel in, the silence between him and Jaemin is like a physical weight, punctuated only by Donghyuck snoring on Renjun’s shoulder between them. There’s a small but growing wet spot on Renjun’s jacket under Donghyuck’s mouth. Jaemin is staring out the window as the lights of the Beltway flash by in the night, blurs of shadow and color.

“Senator Bravard just chose his running mate.” Renjun studies the House Majority Leader’s square jaw and pearls, capping the Twitter news headline. “Mary Elizabeth Matthews. She’s bold, I’ll give you that. Considering she was lambasting his stance on gay marriage two months ago.”

“Just like we projected, though,” Jaemin says, quiet, still staring out the window. “Balancing the ticket with someone younger and more moderate than him. At least on social issues. Classic move.”

“He can try all he wants to lure back middle America,” Renjun says forcefully, shoving his phone back into his breast pocket. “It’s not going to work. This new economic stimulus package your mom signed off on is gonna make Bravard look like a kindergartener trying to play with the big kids.”

Jaemin finally turns to him, with a half-suppressed smile. “Tell me what you really think.”

“All I’m saying is. He better hold onto his veneers.” 

“And how,” Jaemin asks, “do you know about the stimulus package?”

“Um,” Renjun says. 

“I haven’t mentioned it. You weren’t in the room when Mom signed off on it last night. Unless you bugged my cuff links or something without me noticing.” He clasps his hands together in a universal _I’m waiting ever-so-patiently_ pose. “Do you often eavesdrop on confidential Cabinet Room discussions? Do I need to draw up a new NDA?”

The email chain between Renjun and his Capitol Hill insider sources — read: interns he terrorizes after hours at Bullfeathers on First Street — is burning a hole in his breast pocket. “I didn’t do anything you can prove.”

“Renjun Huang,” Jaemin chides, as he turns to look out the window again, “sometimes I think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

It’s not meant as a compliment, Renjun doesn’t think. But he’s smiling when he says, “I get that a lot.” 

After a few beats of silence, Jaemin says, “So. About this whole — national hero thing.”

Renjun says nothing for a moment, then, “We’re totally fucked, right?”

Jaemin isn’t facing him. So Renjun doesn’t feel guilty about watching the way his eyes crinkle into a wry grin. “Oh, completely. We’re a lost cause.”

“Good.” Renjun appreciates his honesty, rare from Jaemin who so often hides behind his veneer of charm and respectability. _Takes one to know one_ , a nasty voice says in Renjun’s head. “Glad we’re on the same page.” 

“We’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other from now on.” Jaemin’s words are careful. “Even more than we do already. And it’s going to become increasingly obvious, even if we magically become Oscar-worthy actors overnight, that you — that we don’t get along.”

Something small deflates in Renjun’s chest. “And wouldn’t that be the perfect smear campaign to destroy your mom’s reputation. This just in: president’s son, murdered by the man who brings him his Americanos.”

“How would you do it?” Jaemin asks. “Take me out? I don’t need to remind you I know jiu jitsu.”

Renjun thinks about the noise Jaemin made in his ear when he pressed into him, and flushes hot. He wrenches his mind away. “Yeah, no. I’d pay Chenle to hire one of his Italian mobster hitmen.”

“You _wouldn’t._ ”

“You’d never see it coming.”

“Wow. So impersonal. I’m weirdly hurt.” 

“What would you prefer? Me dragging you into a closet somewhere and choking you out?”

Jaemin coughs, ever dignified. “Yeah. Well. You were effective at that.” 

Renjun flushes harder and studies the bulletproof glass between them and their Secret Service driver, thankful for its sound barrier. But he can’t resist the jab, the invitation to their usual dance, even though it feels different now after what happened earlier. A dynamic shifted on its axis. “And I don’t need to remind you that I won.” 

“Ha,” Jaemin says, full of air. “That you did.” 

He clears his throat again. Renjun watches him from the corner of his eye. 

“That’s where I’m going with this. We can hardly be in the same room at this point without a physical altercation.” 

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Renjun shifts uncomfortably under Donghyuck’s chin digging into his collarbone. “But for posterity’s sake, or for whichever NSA agent that’s wiretapping your phone right now to make sure you aren’t spilling government secrets — you baited me into it.” 

“Maybe so. But you make it so _easy_.” 

Renjun glares at him over Donghyuck’s head. “Is this going somewhere? Or are you just trying to start a fight again?” 

“Has anyone ever told you patience is a virtue?” Jaemin says, arching a brow. 

“Has anyone ever told you you’re the most sanctimonious bastard this side of the Atlantic?”

That shakes a small laugh loose from Jaemin. “There’s somewhere we should start, if we want to make this work. Make it convincing.”

“Okay,” Renjun says, cautious. 

“So. Would you care to tell me,” Jaemin says, turning back to him, a passing streetlight momentarily lighting his hair and the line of his jaw in faded gold, “why you hate me so much?”

Renjun swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “You sure your ego can handle it?”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Smartass.”

“Likewise. And we’ve skirted around talking about it for the last two years. It’s high time, right?”

Renjun realizes he’s destroying his left thumb’s cuticle and drags his hand from his mouth. “So… Do you remember Ohio? Your campaign stop in Columbus?” 

“Yes. Vaguely. I seem to remember a very rowdy crowd of plastered Buckeye students. And lots of cows. Not in the crowd, obviously.”

Renjun remembers every second of that day in startling clarity. After an impassioned speech from an Ohio State faculty member, Jaemin had approached the podium with long, measured strides. It was a scorching day in August, not long after his twentieth birthday. But it didn’t crack his cool exterior. He spoke about choosing compassion, and choosing a better America, and then he introduced his mom. 

It had been the first time Renjun saw Senator Bae and her son in real life. But cameras didn’t do either of them justice. 

Renjun looks over at him, Donghyuck’s hair tickling his nose. Right now, he can almost see Jaemin’s mirror image from that day, in the outline of his silhouette in the passing streetlamps. His hair had been shorter and swept back off his face. Maybe he was a little thinner then, not yet fully formed. But even four years later, nothing has really changed. Not in his straight spine that projects confidence. Not in the hard set of his brow like he has something to prove.

“You gave your speech,” Renjun says, hushed almost as if in reverence. “You said all the right things. And after your mom took the stage, you came down to the press pool barrier, where the other campaign staff were.”

“And... I’m just now remembering,” Jaemin says. “Your organizing fellowship was in Ohio, wasn’t it.”

“All of us were so excited, being so close to the action. We drove an hour to be there. To talk to the son of our hero,” Renjun says, not bothering to filter his bitterness. “You were wearing red, like your mom.”

“Renjun.” 

“Do you know what you said to me?” Renjun asks, low. “You stepped off the last stair and looked at us — you looked right in my eyes. We called out to you, cheered your name. You couldn’t _not_ have heard us. And you walked right past us like we didn’t exist.”

Jaemin squeezes his eyes shut. “Oh.”

“Do you even remember?” It’s only a whisper. “Or was I just another face in the crowd?”

There’s an uncomfortable moment of silence, as the dust settles, while Jaemin absorbs and Renjun eviscerates his pinky nail.

“So there it is, then,” Jaemin says. 

“There it is.”

“But, you’re still here.” Jaemin turns back to him, then. “Despite it all, you still wanted to be here. You were willing to put up with me for this job, at least.” 

“I mean.” Renjun wrangles with this for a minute, then sighs. “Okay. Listen. I get it. You have a lot on your plate. You don’t owe anyone the time of day. Not only that, you have the eyes of an entire nation on you, at all times. I know your mildly bad days are other people’s worst days of their lives, stress-equivalency-wise. But that doesn’t give you an excuse to make other people feel small.”

“Renjun,” Jaemin says again, and it’s paper-thin and distant. “I want you to know — it’s not an excuse for what I did. But I’d found out a few weeks ago that my dad… I — I wasn’t myself. I was completely and utterly checked out, with everyone in my life.” He lets out a rueful little laugh. “And it might not mean anything to you — I get it if it doesn’t, truly — but I am sorry.” 

Oh. Of course. 

Jaemin’s father. 

He was a retired Olympic cycler who President Bae met through New York City council, long before she was president. Bae tells the story often — she stole his Senate party nomination from him, but he still got her number backstage. The crowd always laughs. 

Renjun also remembers the news headlines, afterwards. Colon cancer, only forty-six. Gray-faced reporters in newsrooms, _so young_ , _what a waste_ , _what a tragedy_. His funeral was on Christmas Eve, not even a month before President Bae was sworn in. 

And even in the tense final days of the campaign, the Bae administration hadn’t breathed a word about his illness. Nobody knew he had been sick until he was already gone. 

Renjun adds up the set of Jaemin’s brow like he’s about to enter the ring, the stiffening of his spine whenever his father is mentioned, the cancer philanthropies, the fists curled in his lap right now as he meets Renjun’s eyes. 

Renjun can imagine a lot, but he can’t imagine — that. 

He doesn’t regret bringing it up, though. He’s never suffered loss to the degree that Jaemin has. But he hasn’t exactly had the perfect home life, either. He loves his parents, but his relationship with them is a fraught one, of closed-door conversations and violent silence. And Renjun knows what it means to mourn. 

And it’s comforting, disconcertingly so, that this man who is carried on the tides of adoration from his country, at the end of the day, is just a human boy after all. Just like Renjun. It’s an intimacy Renjun never expected. 

“You have a lot of nerve,” Renjun says softly.

“For what?”

The SUV is turning onto Constitution Avenue. Renjun’s heart feels like it’s on the outside of his chest, beating red and bloody, too easy for Jaemin to see. Jaemin opens his mouth, and something fluttering and anxious seizes his throat.

He says, too lofty, “For pretending to be a self-centered asshole all the time, when you’re… actually kind of a decent person.” 

If Renjun is retreating, Jaemin doesn’t call him on it. He huffs a laugh, somehow making it sound haughty and mocking again. “As if I have the time to play double agent.”

“I just think it wouldn’t kill you, you know. To come out from inside your castle, every once in a while.”

“The irony of _you_ saying that. It’s staggering.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Renjun says stiffly. “What _I’m_ sayingis, when you act like a regular human person, it’s.” He picks at a stray thread in his jacket. “It’s — nice,” he finishes lamely. It’s been a weird week. 

“Maybe you’ve just been committed to misunderstanding me.”

“I’m not committed to anything about you,” Renjun snaps. 

“Like I said,” Jaemin says, an annoying little smile quirking his lips, “despite everything, you’re still here, aren’t you?”

The SUV jerks to a stop. Before Renjun can fire back, Donghyuck stirs on Renjun’s shoulder with a snuffle. At their stares, he nudges off and looks between the two of them, bleary-eyed. “What’s happening?” he slurs. “Oh, how rude of me. Am I interrupting your homo-fraternal bonding?”

“Yeah, we’re really hitting it off,” Renjun grumbles, and hauls himself out the car door and head-first back into the real world, where things make sense. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ʕ♡˙ᴥ˙♡ʔ  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/haedeluna)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/haedeluna)

**Author's Note:**

> ʕ♡˙ᴥ˙♡ʔ  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/haedeluna)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/haedeluna)


End file.
